Great men — brilliant men — have often speculated about time machines. Devices that might take us backward or forward to our past or our future. But why hasn’t anyone explored the idea of a time-slowing machine?
This occurred to me the other day after walking my daughter to school. As I strolled back carrying her scooter, I marveled at the Christmas blowup toys in someone’s front yard. “Already out!?!” I thought. “How can this be? It’s too early.”
But it isn’t. Thanksgiving is almost here, and that means we’re locked and loaded, buckled up and bundled in with a heavy foot on the gas, headed for Christmas.
Drink some eggnog, folks, or you’ll miss it.
As I stared at the partially deflated toys, it occurred to me that my daughter will be seven this Christmas. And seven sounds a lot like one of those coming ages when you don’t want to see Christmas lights anymore.
GASP!
That annual tradition of driving around town in a Christmas light delirium, desperately searching — like some kind of illumination junkie — for the next great light fix. I try to catch the look on my daughter’s face in the rearview mirror as her bottom jaw falls out. Of course, I also forget I’m driving and we nearly become part of a display.
“Sorry. Don’t mind me. Just drunk on lights and holiday cheer. Next good rain will wash out those tire ruts in your yard.”
That’s when it occurred to me time machines are no good. I don’t want to go back and relive the past. I want more time for the “right now.” To get more of the present. To slow it down.
Have there been scientific studies to explain this? Why as we grow up it all starts to speed up? Is it because we’re taller, and closer to the sun?
I have another theory, and I’m going to try it out this year. It all comes from this notion: If you don’t want something to come — a bill, your next dentist appointment, Monday — then it’s upon you in a flash. But the more you want something, the longer it takes to come. Witness the teapot. Stand over it, anxious for it to boil and it won’t. Physics dictates those little water molecules will actually come together to play a practical joke on you. “Dude, if we don’t boil soon, what do you bet he literally POPS?”
I call it the “Time Sucks Paradox.”
So this year, both for science and to prolong the season, I am embarking on a grand experiment to slow down time. And I encourage you to try with me. If you do, you need to get a white lab coat, some goggles and some chemistry beakers … just for effect. Keep a little notebook with observations and let your hair go nuts like Einstein’s.
Here’s how we’ll do it: Like a little kid — a desperate, anxious, unbearable, I-would-sell-my-parents-to-the-pirates-if-time-would-speed-up kid — you have to want Christmas to come so bad that you fear your butt will fall off. That’s the secret, OK. That your BUTT WILL FALL OFF! Because that’s the way a little kid thinks. That patience is for fools, and that some body part will inexplicably come unattached if they don’t get what they want right away. But, remember? As a kid, the more you wanted Christmas, the longer it took. See? It will work!
But you can’t just say it — you have to live it! Every morning you have to wake up, rollover to your loved one and ask, “Is it Christmas morning yet?!?”
You have to pout and stomp your feet and generally make a complete jerk of yourself in front of respectable people. In meetings at work you have to say things like, “This is just drivel! I have more important things to do … like watching the clock.” Then storm out.
Every bit of your energy, every ounce of your being, every waking minute of your day must be expended on a grand quest to speed up time.
In turn, and if my theory holds — done a LOT of calculations on this one, folks — time will actually slow to a crawl. Pretty good, huh?
We will be able to enjoy the season at a reasonable pace, holding onto those precious moments that normally slip through in a flash. This might be the solution to the age-old riddle of time.
So, start right now and repeat after me: “Dang! Isn’t it Christmas already! Better get here soon … or my butt will fall off!”
Good luck, fellow scientists, and here’s hoping for more time this holiday season.