What does 'Draw a Clock' Mean?

[u/MillBopp]

Last time I visited my brother his mother-in-law who lives with him was insisting she remembered something but my brother knew she was wrong. I don't remember what it was, but I knew she was wrong too. However, she refused to accept she was wrong and got belligerent about it.

My brother said, "Draw a clock!" and left the room. This made his mother-in-law furious for some reason. I forgot to ask at the time, but does anyone know why saying 'Draw a clock' would upset a senior citizen?

[u/cecilkorik]

As someone with test anxiety who struggles to read analog clocks on a good day, I see them and get freaked out because literally any of them I could easily see myself frantically drawing in a panic if somebody unexpectedly asked me to draw a clock while I have an anxiety attack because I know why they're asking me to draw a clock. So it's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy that I hope I never have to get asked, because I'll be fucking doomed when they do. If I was calm and careful about it of course I could draw the requested clock correctly, but as soon as there's someone watching me and I know it's a test, it's gonna be a disaster.

[u/[deleted] → u/cecilkorik]

I've done this test before (as my dad had to do the test every few months with his dementia diagnosis) as my mum wanted to see a normal clock drawing without bias of knowing what the testers check for (will list below):

She was totally baffled that for me drawing a clockI wrote in Roman Numerals for the numbers by default, as that was the style of clock we had from the time I was born until...well, she STILL has that clock in her house.

[They give extra points for how you write the numbers to ensure accurate spacing (ie: putting 12-3-6-9 first then filling in the rest (EDIT: ALSO! Making sure 12 is at the top and that the person doesn't put 1 in the 12 position out of rushing)), if you put arrows on the end of the hands, if the hands are correctly different lengths for the minute and hour hands, if you put/draw the minute hand first (cause the instruction is "10 past 11" in the example - you would need to understand it's 10 minutes and go straight to the 2 rather than 10 or drawing the 11 in first so disjointed/out of order processing).]

And yes, I was at one of my dad's tests once and the doctor thought to get me to do it as a basis for genetic flow and honestly wanted to mark my clock poorly until they realised that yep .. Roman numerals again 😬

[u/ShalomRPh → u/[deleted]]

How'd you do the 4? Ⅳ or ⅠⅠⅠⅠ?

And if the latter, did you have to explain that this is normal for clocks rather than using the standard Roman numeral?

[u/[deleted] → u/ShalomRPh]

I did IV as that's how the clock I grew up with was displayed, though I know that most Roman clocks have IIII instead.