Got a second?

Time is subjective. Einstein was right, and I can prove it without advanced mathematics.

Saturday night, my wife and I, along with our friend Jon and some others went to see the new Harry Potter movie, which, on the whole, we enjoyed very much. On the way back we stopped at a diner for a snack to celebrate my mom’s birthday. And on the way back from that, we totaled our car.

{A side note to those who drive, have driven, are learning to drive, or ever plan to drive: a flashing red light really does mean stop completely. A flashing yellow light really does mean slow down and use caution. We had the flashing red and didn’t stop all the way; they had the flashing yellow and didn’t slow down at all. Bang.}

(And for God’s sake, in case there’s anyone out there still too stupid not to, please, please, please wear your seat belts. They saved two lives this weekend and kept our kids from becoming orphans.)

So I was in the front passenger seat when I saw the image of a silver car in the headlights. I didn’t even have time to think “Wow, that’s way too close” before I felt the shock of impact. We must have spun around at close to the speed of light because I had time to think, “Say, we’re in a car accident, aren’t we? I hope it turns out ok. Maybe it won’t be as bad as it seems. I don’t want anybody to be hurt…” and so on. All that stuff about your life flashing before your eyes is nonsense, but there sure is plenty of time for it to do so, should it choose to.(On the other hand, I don’t remember actually spinning at all. My visual memory skips from “just before impact” straight to “time to get out of the car”. Let the Lorentz transformations explain that one.)From this point, everything proceeded in normal time for awhile. I dragged myself out of the car, helped my wife and friend out the passenger side (their doors were fused shut), and got ourselves to the curb.

{Another aside: I have discovered the ratio of angels to complete pricks in this world. While sitting on the curb, senseless from the shock, we were aided by one guy who appointed himself traffic cop, a woman who gave us a blanket (it was raining) and refused to give an address to which to send it back, and another young woman who, besides knowing first aid and being a nursing student, also called 911 and let us use her cell phone. On the other end of the scale was the prick in the SUV who honked at us because he wanted to squeeze between where we were on the curb and where my ruined car sat in the street. He came within 4 inches of running over my wife’s foot. Thanks asshole. Hope you got where you were going on time. You’re probably the same guy who doesn’t pull over for ambulances and passes school buses while they’re letting off children. Our good Samaritan “traffic cop” yelled at him for us. It seems, therefore, that the angel-to-prick ratio is about 3 to 1. This is gratifying, although I recognize it is an isolated case and I welcome suggestions for other values. I hereby dub this the “Strieb ATP (angel-to-prick) Ratio, and fully expect a commendation and byline in any updated texts on mass psychology. End of aside.}


So we sign all the papers needed and they lay my wife out on a stretcher because of neck and back and knee pain and they scrape the car off the pavement and onto a tow truck and we all pile into the ambulance and it’s off to the hospital.

Upon arrival, the check-in nurse asks, “What time was the accident?”. My initial reaction is that about 15 minutes have passed, but I thought in case it was 20 (you want to get these things right, otherwise I’m sure they chase you down and bother you for the rest of your life with notices in the mail) that I’d better check the slip of paper the cop on the scene gave me. (By the way, this little humdinger brought the attention of no less than 5 police cars, two ambulances, one tow truck, and as-yet-uncounted lawyers)

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that 50 minutes had gone by. And worse, this was only the first of several time expansions to come that night. For as we waited to be checked-in, and then waited to be admitted, and then waited for a physical, and then waited to talk to a doctor, and then waited for X-rays (and, in Jon’s case, CAT scanned and EKG’d, and in my case, given a tetanus shot), we glanced multiple times at the clock. After 20 subjective minutes, one hour had gone by. After one subjective hour, 3 1/2 hours had gone by. And after what felt like 2 hours since the accident, we left the hospital 7 hours after we got there.

Yet, at the same time, we spent an eternity waiting at the hospital for the next step. So is time fluid? Can it go fast and slow at the same time (so to speak) for the same person? Strangely enough, yes. But why? I haven’t the slightest idea. Someone make a phone call and get Stephen Hawking up to date on this. I want answers.