“Ding!”
I took my phone out of my pocket to read the text. It said, “I’ll be there in seven minutes.”
Typing a quick, “Okay” followed by a smiley face, I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself. Women are convinced that men don’t think about much. Exceptions are noted for sports, cars, cleavage, and Bruce Lee movies, but outside of the five or ten brain cells required to be conversational on such topics, we are generally regarded as animals which should be closely supervised, penned if possible, chained if needed. However, we think on a great many important topics.
Seven minutes? How could she know with such precision? Why not six minutes, or eight, or 7.43 minutes? Would that then make her late? Men use numbers like five and ten in reference to these things. Better still, would be not to make mention of time at all, as our failures, even if minuscule, to meet the expectation created are more easily measured when specifics are given. They are then logged in red ink in a record book filled of complicated graphs and charts which all resemble a fall off a steep cliff.
Yes, it’s best to keep our mouths shut and not provide any hard numbers, but if pressed, round numbers should be used, whole units or numbers divisible by five or ten.
What about distance? Would she tell me next that she was 4.926 miles away, or 312,111 23/64 inches, and that there were 2.5 people in line in front of her at the deli where she was detained? Who picked the half a ticket when told to pick a number? Had they been fed to the meat slicer until their belt buckle made sparks for doing the deli line wrong? No. The answer should be five, five miles away. Round up, or round down.
Miles are miles, feet are feet, inches are only relevant for carpentry and horse racing. Though she'd asked me once, early on, how big it was. I told her ten inches, rounding up, or rounding down. I don’t recall which, but she seemed to like that, my previously sagging chart taking a decidedly upward slope.
YOU ARE READING
That isn't funny, at all
HumorThis collection contains assorted humorous prose, and perhaps some humorous poems if I'm in the mood, bearing in mind that this collection may not be funny, at all.