I’m sitting here behind a table, waiting for someone to walk by so I can sucker him or her into buying baked goods for charity. I’m sitting here… and no one’s around. I’m fairly certain the clock is ticking, but it sure doesn’t feel like it.
I’m still trying to understand why time fluctuates the way it does. I mean, when you’re having a good time, things whiz by like a tornado and you’re stuck in a vacuum and then your head explodes. Um… okay, that’s not the right comparison, but things seem to be moving pretty fast. Hell, even when you’re scared because your car is tumbling over the embankment, down a cliff and right into Vin Diesel when he’s trying to out-snowboard an avalanche—that happens fast.
When you’re watching Vin Diesel out-snowboard the avalanche on the movie screen, that’s when you enter the time warp. You want to get up, go to the bathroom, get some popcorn, shoot yourself in the head—anything to make the suffering stop. But it doesn’t. Every time you try to stand, your mother clutches your hands even harder because she freaks out whenever there’s a big explosion and you’re left with fingernail grooves in the backs of your hands half an inch deep plus a press-on nail or two and then when the movie is over a year and a half later, you wonder why the hell she finds that tattoo of three X’s on the back of his neck “droolably sexy.” Better wiping blood onto your shirt after the movie than some other fluid, I suppose.
Hopefully you get the idea because I don’t want to think about that movie any more than I have to. While I’m sitting here with almost no one in the room and nothing to do but type on the computer, time is moving reeeeeeeeeally slowly. Half an hour turns out to be five minutes. Quitting time is still fifty minutes away. That’s how bad it gets. Counting off the seconds doesn’t help much, either: whenever I get to 6000, it’s usually been about eight minutes since I started. Except when I’m using my calculator, I suppose, but I imagine I’d send the sucker flying down a very large pile of snow and smash into a fire hydrant after a couple minutes (which would, of course, feel like 22 minutes and 35 seconds).
So why do these changes happen? How come the stuff we despise lasts so long, while the stuff we enjoy comes and goes so quickly? (And how many women can attest to the latter sentiment?) Lord Almighty, if I knew, I’d change it around faster than my head could explode. My best guess is that He’s just equalizing things a little. If we can’t make better use of our time, He’s going to give us more and more until things change. When things do change, He takes time back to make up for the extra He gave us earlier. I suppose it’s better than the government, which takes more money or not as much more money depending on the circumstances. Still, God’s supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnivorous… He’s supposed to be the Fuckin’ Man. So why can’t He keep things moving slow and steady? As soon as that second hand moves a little further, I’ll get back to you.
