Please give me one minute, that is, 90 seconds of your time!

Hello friends and neighbors and welcome to Wednesday’s machinations on this February 3, 2010. Back in the day when we read the Sunday comics, that is, only after attending Church services, of course, I remember the one entitled “Snuffy Smith.” One of the favorite phrases of the hillbilly Snuffy Smith was: “Time’s a wastin.” This strip was created in 1922 and it continues to be published today in some newspapers. But I always think about that saying when I consider how time seems to be getting away from those of us who are in the last quarter of our sojourn here on the planet. As I was traveling the other day I heard a fascinating report on the radio about the issue of time speeding up as we grow older. This is a reality and it can be proven that older folks actually do believe time is moving faster, but it is also a true mystery to scientists as to why this is the case.

They can prove that older folks do live with the concept that time is moving much faster than it did when they were younger. However, it’s interesting because when they blindfold older and younger people and ask them to press a button when they think one minute is up, the young people typically are within plus or minus 5 seconds of the actual 60-second count. Meanwhile, the older folks on average hit their button around 30 seconds later. This means their guess for how long a minute is comes up to an average of 90 seconds. If time is moving faster for them, how in the world would they guess a minute to be longer? That’s part of the puzzle that has yet to be put together. One school of thought says the slower response of the brain plays a role because the older person sees more happening because they are no longer counting time accurately. In other words, the world is moving faster because we, over the hill folks, see and account for 90 seconds of stuff for every actual minute. I will have to think about that one.

Another theory has to do with experience. When we were younger, we experienced many things for the first time. Our brains paid very close attention to all the new details that surrounded that ‘new’ experience. As we grow older our threshold for experience becomes less acute since we have so much already recorded, therefore, the theory is that our brain sees a special event as being much faster since we record less detail. I will have to think about that one. Finally, there’s the neuron deal where some stuff works differently and all of that along with everything else causes this sensation to be a way of life for the older generation. Enough already. I believe it really has more to do with our perception that our world is changing even as we speak and that us older dudes really do get Snuffy’s evaluation: “Times a wastin!” Have a great day and may God bless. Amen. …..More later.