One Minute
Eli 3.7 asked me today how long a minute lasted. I asked him long he thought a minute lasted. "It lasts twenty!" he said.By the way, Eli went yard, upper deck, and house today. I was pitching a white plastic ball to him in the back yard, and he took his black plastic bat and tape-measured me. The ball landed on the second-story roof. It was a rocket. The sound the ball made coming off the bat was so loud that Gloria turned around when she heard it. CRACK.
But I digress.
I decided to find out if I actually knew how long a minute lasted, so I closed my eyes and timed myself. I opened my eyes at fifty-nine seconds. Then Gloria walked in and she wanted to try.
One minute, fifteen seconds.
"That certainly explains quite a lot," I said.
"Great," she said.
"So when you say 'I thought I had more time,' you really did think you had more time. Twenty-five percent, actually."
"I'm going now," she said.
Gloria, you see, in spite of her hottitude and witty, kind demeanor, is a Later. She's late. Frequently. She always has been, from the moment I met her. Her friends allege that she was like that before I was around.
Now, after ten years, the Rosetta Stone.
Of course she's always late. She thinks a minute lasts twenty-five percent longer than it actually does. So if she needs to be somewhere in thirty minutes, she'll take thirty-seven and a half. An hour? One hour and fifteen minutes.
I stopped trying to figure this out years ago, so it's like a cold case file that's suddenly been reopened with the discovery of new evidence.
Now I'm curious. Was it just an accident?
So if you're always on-time/late and your spouse is the opposite, see how long each of you thinks a minute lasts. I'm guessing that the timely people will be much closer to the true measure of a minute than a later. Send me an e-mail and I'll tally the results.
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