I do more before 7am . . .

It's baffling to me how much mental energy I can exert when I want to. It sends my brain room into tornado-like storms of swirling furniture whenever I get a glimpse of how much I am actually capable of doing at one time.

Let's take, for example, the morning time. Time to get up. Wakey-wakey. Rise and shine. I hate getting up in the morning.

So, Necessity, (whom I imagine to be a plumpish woman of about 64 years, her hair drawn into a face-lifting bun and the corners of her mouth drawn out and up into a permanent grimace) strides into action. She is the single mother of an only child. His name is Invention (but he prefers to be called Harry), and he is a small, bright lad of about six. He wears spectacles and is never found without a pencil tucked behind his ear. When Mom calls, Harry sets himself to solving whatever problem she throws at him.

In the wee hours of the morning, the problem looks something like this:

Mother Necessity's Problem: Doug has to arrive at school somewhere in the close vicinity of 8am. There are minutes worth of fudging permissible here, but Murphy's Law and the unknowable line of traffic between here and there make that dangerous. Mother Necessity pretty much considers 8am to be the target here.

Mother Necessity's Second Problem: Doug hates getting up in the morning. Doug is very sleepy. Doug needs his sleep. Doug deserves his sleep. Doug wants his sleep. And that damned alarm clock is buzzing loudly from across the room.

(The alarm clock is situated across the room because putting it next to Doug's sleeping body made the problem too easy for little Harry to solve.)

And so little Harry starts to work. While Doug sleeps (often carrying on with his dreaming) Harry instructs Doug's body to get up out of bed, walk across the room, read the time on the alarm clock, hit the snooze button, make sure the alarm light is flashing, (because the clock only allows you to snooze three times. After that it turns itself off. We found that out the hard way.) and return to bed.

While Doug lies in bed, having never left the land of ZZZ, Harry begins doing arithmetical computations. They look something like this:

Necessary arrival time at school = 8am
Necessary departure time from home = 7:45am
Necessary duration of shower = 20 minutes
Necessary duration of morning hygiene = 25 minutes
Necessary duration of breakfast = 15 minutes
Time needed to make lunch = 10 minutes
Time needed to dress = 5 minutes

Plus, there are often extra allotments for things like:
Time needed to print out lesson plans = 5 minutes
Time needed to load up the car = 3 minutes

Harry adds up all this time, subtracts it from the necessary arrival time at school, and compares the result to the time he noted when he looked at the clock.

Then the magic happens.

Harry can shave minutes from anywhere. What if we didn't blow-dry the hair today? That saves 2.5 minutes. Shaving? Another 4.5 minutes. Quickly scan the contents of the fridge. Are there materials needed for making lunch? No? Good. That's another 6.2 minutes.

This all happens in a few short milliseconds, by the way. That little Harry kid is a freakin' genius! Once the calculations are complete, Harry just needs to wait for the alarm to sound again. When it does, he goes through the process again, and consults his mother on the status of the Second Problem. Her answer will determine Harry's next steps. Either more computations and more time-shaving, or Doug decides to get out of bed and start the day.

In which case, Harry crawls back into his bed until he is summoned again.

See what I mean? If only I could get Harry to work on other things!!!

Posted: Mon - December 15, 2003 at 11:47 AM

getBlogName(); > getCategoryName("C347403247"); >

I do more before 7am . . .

> >