Acetio | Blogma

There was an electrical outlet (everyone but my father called it a "plug") near the floor, near the bathroom.
The plastic cover had cracked long ago and when my sister accidentally kicked it while running down the hall, the cover fell off in pieces. Later, at dinner, my father announced, "The Face Plate is broken." I looked at my dinner plate, wondering what he could possibly be talking about. My sister looked at me, accusingly, and I kept my mouth shut.

After dinner my father muttered to himself while he covered the hole in the drywall with bits of masking tape. Without looking up he said, "This is for the time being."

This was not the first time I had heard the phrase, but it was the first time I remember wondering what kind of pathetic offering this was. In some countries, gods with powerful, exotic-sounding names got to have animals slaughtered on alters in their names, or had virgins (I didn't know what that was either) pushed into volcanoes.
Our god had such an abstract name - a title, really. How its wrath would be appeased (or its blessings summoned) with some tape over a little hole was beyond my understanding.

Perhaps a Time Being had mastery over time itself. Perhaps if you needed a thing to go back in time - but only the thing, not the whole world - you would create a model of the thing while muttering an incantation, and in the morning the thing would be back, in the form it was before.

The next morning I went to look, but the tape was still there. Had our god foresaken us? Had my father's incantations been inadequate? The only words of his mutterings that I had heard clearly were words my mother had told us never to say. It was much clearer now. A god who had mastery over time should not be summoned casually. Imagine if every time you made the sacred oath something in the room would revert to a former image of itself?

But that power enticed me. I had a toy car with a broken wheel. The plastic knob that held the wheel on the axle was missing and the wheel wouldn't stay on. I got some tape and balled it up on the end of the axle and held it in my hand.
I closed my eyes and recited as many of the sacred words as I could remember. I soon heard my sister shouting, "He's swearing!"
My mother shouted up, "Don't swear!"
I continued, more quietly, but it was too quiet to have any effect. Still, the tape held the wheel on so I wasn't entirely disappointed.

That evening my father was walking to the bathroom with a magazine. I pointed at the tape and said, "It's still there! For The Time Being! What happened?"
He sighed and said he would go to the hardware store tomorrow. "Just like their mother." He muttered as he closed the bathroom door.
"A better offering" I said to myself. That was the problem, the tape was an inadequate representation of the plastic cover. How would The Time Being know what we wanted? My father would go get some plaster or something and sculpt a proper one.

His comment about my mother confused me though. Was she the guardian of the Time Being, and was he its servant? By keeping vigilance over the offering was I doing good works? I mentioned this to my mother and she smiled. "Thanks for reminding him. We just don't want you or your sister to get electrocuted. And no more swearing."
I didn't know the word "electrocuted" but was fascinated by it. Surely this was the punishment levied upon those who were either too casual about the offerings made to the Time Beings, or upon those who summoned the Beings without a good enough cause. She was right in stopping me from my incantations and my father was wrong for forestalling his duties.

The next day the tape was still in place. At dinner I mentioned this to my parents. I wanted to be sure to accuse my father with witnesses present.
"The tape for The Time Being is still there." I announced.
My father rolled his eyes. "This weekend. Why do you care so much?" He asked me.
"It's for The Time Being!" I whined.
"Yes." he said. "It's just for the time being".

I was shocked into silence. "Just for? JUST FOR?!" I thought to myself. His attitude seemed too lackadaisical. But was it possible that I had misread the situation? Perhaps The Time Being was not a god at all. Perhaps it was more like one of those elves who helped the cobbler make shoes in that story. The tape was not a ritualistic offering but a mere trinket to attract some fairy to come and selectively reverse time doing our labor for us.

That Sunday my father made a big show of tearing out the tape and installing a new plastic cover over the outlet. I didn't know what was happening. If the whole point was to create a model of the thing you wanted, why go to the trouble of getting the actual thing itself? Or, if this was a model made as an offering, it was so close to the real thing that summoning The Time Being seemed pointless. I mentioned this to my father. He gave me a funny look and finally said, "That was for the time being. This is permanent." And he screwed the little screw in tight, covering the whole completely. Then I understood. The tape was not an offering to a god or a pixie. The Time Being was evil, or at least full of mischief, and the whole point of the tape was to close off our home from the evil spirit living inside the wall we have come to call The Time Being.

If you have a hole in your wall, close it up immediately, and say whatever swears you need to so that the Time Being doesn't sneak out in the night and cause havoc by turning objects into their former selves.