Mastering Time

In chapter 11 Joe decides he wants to be able to tell time. That presents itself to be difficult seeing how he can't see or hear. At the beginning of the chapter Joe tries very hard to keep him self busy and entertained. He starts thinking of old books and songs that he had read and heard and tries his best to remember all the lines. He then comes up with the idea of how he could possibly tell time. Loosing eye sight and sense of hearing are things he has to work around in order to reach his goal. The first thing he tries to do is calculate the time from when he was hit on september 18th and until the day he woke up. He soon comes to realize this is impossible and chooses a different method. His initial thought process was to count the seconds, minutes, and hours between each nurses' visit until he reached 24 hours but he can't focus that long so that method goes out the window. He then decides to distinguish the amount of bowl movements that occur and how often his sheets are changed between each nurse's visits. That doesn't exactly work so then he comes to the conclusion that the nurse probably baths him in the morning and estimates that it is around 2 hours between each visit. This one works and he can feel the change in temperature on his neck when he is being bathed. His methods are quite confusing to me but they work for him. I think he decides to master time so he can feel more alive and know what is going on. He wants to feel more of a part of the world and with being able to tell time he can't think of himself as similar to others out there in the world. He also wants to do it to be entertained so he isn't constantly bored. i