When You're Traveling from Nantucket (song)

When You're Traveling is a song from episode 87 of Animaniacs in which Yakko sings all about the concept of time. The music and lyrics are by Randy Rogel.

Lyrics

Announcer:

And now, Yakko Warner sings about time.

Yakko:

When you're traveling from Nantucket

Through Chicago to St. Paul,

And you're standing at an airport

And you look upon the wall,

There's a clock for every city

And a different time for all

From Asia through Malaysia to Peru.

Did you ever wonder why that

When it's ten o'clock in Maine,

At precisely the same moment,

It is 3 AM in Spain?

When it's breakfast time in Rome,

They're having lunch in the Ukraine

And it's supper up in upper Kathmandu.

If the Earth were spinning faster

As the sun is going past her,

Then a day would only be an hour long.

And school, when they begin it,

Would only last a minute,

Before everybody has to run along.

Wakko and Dot:

All right!

Yakko:

If the Earth were the planet

That was closest to the sun,

A year would be much shorter

And you'd have a lot of fun.

'Cause by the time you were in first grade,

You'd be over twenty-one

And you'd live to be nine hundred, three, or four.

Time is relative, dependent,

You can save it, you can spend it

Doing things you like to do

Or learning how.

Wakko:

You can't see it, you can't taste it....

Dot:

But you certainly can waste it...

Yakko:

Which is really what we're doing here right now!

The international date line's

An imaginary cleft.

Today is on the right side

And tomorrow's on the left.

So when you cross it, do you then arrive

The day before you left?

That's how it'd work, it's quite berserk, you see.

So if you were born in China

While I'm born in Carolina,

Well, then, you're a day ahead of me, you see.

So the way I've got it reckoned,

If we're born in the same second,

Then why should you be a day older than me?

But it really is no miracle

The difference in our birth.

Because the world is spherical,

That's why around the Earth...

The Warners:

There's always different times for Moscow,

London, Boston and Ft. Worth.

Yakko:

And that's the way it's always gonna be.

So remember, when you're traveling

From Nantucket to St. Paul,

And that airport as you're staring

At those clocks upon the wall,

You should think about this song, my friend,

And then you will recall...

Wakko:

That it was mildly amusing...

Dot:

But then totally confusing...

The Warners:

And we bet you wish we hadn't sung at all!

Errors

• If a day on Earth were only an hour long, proportionally school would actually be 15 minutes long.
• Most of the time, Spain is six hours ahead of Maine, so when the time is 10 PM in Maine then the time in Spain is 4 AM. It would only be 3 AM during the few short weeks of the year when the United States is observing Daylight Saving Time and the European Union isn't. However, the EU are considering abolishing DST, which would make this accurate for a larger portion of the year.
• The time in Ukraine is only one hour ahead of Rome, so when people in Rome are having breakfast then Ukrainians are likely just finishing it.
• Nepal time is only 4 hours 45 minutes ahead of Rome, so during breakfast time in Rome the residents of Kathmandu are probably about to have lunch.