Got a Minute? - January 2010

“I have a quick question.”

Sure, and the check is in the mail.

It’s not so much that the question is long, but I am betting the answer to the quick question will take more than a minute. And a minute is a long time.

Sit with my favorite sister at a soccer game, with her son’s team leading and Brandon playing goal. That last two minutes – when, for some reason, the refs stop the clock but the game time runs, just unbeknownst to the anxious fans – seems like an eternity. So many times we have looked at each other and said, “This game can’t end fast enough.”

Yeah, a minute can seem like a lifetime.

You have no idea how long a minute is until you are waiting for the light to change at Route 206 and Hillsborough Road. How long can it be, right? I don’t know the answer, but, if I am making a left, I bring a book to read (think War and Peace). There is one particular light I hit on my way home from Rutgers basketball games where I am the only person around, in the dark, and I am soooo tempted just to go ahead and make that left on red. After all, no one is coming, and who’s going to know? I can get home a minute sooner, right? Yikes, I can almost hear the sirens just thinking about it.

It makes me nuts when I see people leaving a close game with a minute left on the clock. What do they have to do that is so important that it can’t wait another 60 seconds? Congratulations, you will be sitting in the traffic in the parking lot a full minute ahead of me, I think. Why not just stay and see the end of the game?

The longest two minutes of my day are when the electric toothbrush is working its way through its cycle. I can’t really do much else besides letting it run its course, so I spend that time thinking and solving the problems of the world. By the end of the two minutes I have run out of ideas and have forgotten the solutions I came up with, which shows you how really long two minutes is.

It drives me crazy when I am watching “American Idol” and Ryan Seacrest so cleverly promises to tell you who is going home – after the break. I’m not competing, and still, that break seems to take forever even to me.

Or say you are waiting for the plumber, delivery person or someone else whose arrival is promised in a “window” of either morning or afternoon or four-hour blocks. His/her imminent arrival is predicated on whether you are actually there. Chances of the service person showing up early are greater if you are not home or are racing to get there. If you are home, you know someone won’t show up until the very end of the promised period – if at all.

Try being on hold for the insurance company or the cable company. Every now and then the music is interrupted by a semi-friendly recording says that your call is important and promises that someone will be with you shortly. Meanwhile, I keep the phone on speaker while I pay the bills on-line, sort out the coupons and try to remember the name of Lucy’s neighbor (Mrs. Trumble) or the answer to some other burning question.

Go to the doctor’s office, where you are either the last one in the waiting room or are left in the examination room with no magazines. Time creeps by ever-so-slowly. Once I was so bored that I started taking pictures of the office décor with my cell phone camera. Now I always bring along my own reading material.

Yet, as the song says, “time passes much too quickly when we’re together laughing.” Think about how many times have you been out with friends and suddenly – after what seems like a half an hour – someone looks at his/her watch and says, “Wow, I’ve got to go, we’ve been here for hours.”

Back to the soccer game. If your team is trailing, the time flies by and there never seems to be enough time to get back into the game. The hell with the other goalie’s mom, I say. I don’t want to see this game end!

I guess it all comes down to the fact that I realize that time, especially as I get older, is finite, and I appreciate it so much more now than when it seemed unlimited. I just don’t want to waste it at red lights and holding for insurance people. I’d rather spend it doing things I really enjoy, where the time is worth investing. Time flies when you are having fun, you know.

I realize that I enticed you to read this essay with the inherent promise that it would only take a minute, and you have now realized that it took longer than that. I hope the time flew by and that you loved every minute.