Tales from Rural Maine: Understanding time

When my nephew was very little, he seemed to have an unreasonable level of frustration when he was told to wait for a very short time. He wasn't a naturally impatient person, but for some reason being told to wait "a minute" left him feeling hopeless, as though you had said an hour instead of a minute.

My a-ha moment came when I realized that for Bailey, "a minute" didn't mean sixty seconds. It literally meant, "some-long-interminable-indeterminate-amount-of-time-that-generally-means-a-grown-up-isn't-willing-to-say-no-but-also-isn't-willing-to-do-what-was-asked-of-them-right-now."

We were all saying, "In a minute, Bai!" when he asked to play or get help or get attention or have a treat or any and all of the other things kids are needing when they're three. He hadn't yet learned about measuring time on clocks; his understanding of words and of time came from his experience. "A minute" could be counted on to be a frustratingly long amount of time.

As I stood on Tuesday night in the kitchen staring at the heap of dirty dishes that Pete said on Monday morning that he'd wash "later," it occurred to me that what he meant was...he'd do them "in a minute."