Musing on Time

What if time actually speeds up and slows down, but we don't know it because we are inside time?

For example, suppose you and I are standing in the back yard and I toss a basketball to you. It goes up in the air and comes down in your hands.

Now suppose that time slowed *way* down as I tossed it, and suppose that time then zoomed like lightning just as you caught the ball. But because you and I are both inside the same time, we just saw the ball go up and come down at the usual speed, because you and I with all our perceptions were slowing down and speeding up inside the same time span.

How can we know this is not happening?

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A Man's Gotta Do What a Man's Gotta Do

The Panhandle of Golden Gate Park, Summer 1987: On my way back from the store I walked along the eucalyptus trees in the Panhandle. This is an arm of Golden Gate park that extends between Lyon and Fell streets, and it's a great hangout for bums, lovers, basketball players, and me.

Just ahead of me, on a bench sat a young Hispanic couple. She looked miserable, with eyes red from crying, and just as I passed their bench I heard the young man saying, "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

It was so hard to keep from laughing.

And then I remembered an evening, just a few nights before ...

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The Yankee Devil

A small Japanese marketplace, 1959: My uncle Eugene, known as Commander Hurn in the Navy, was in charge of finances of a navy base in Japan, and had to learn to speak Japanese.

That's why he understoodd what the men said behind him in the marketplace. One man laughed, turning to the other.

"Look at the Yankee Devil," he said quietly, "and the red socks he wears."

Commander Hurn stiffened, and turned slowly, all dignity, to glare down from his 5' 11" height at the shorter men.

"Those are not my socks," he said slowly, in Japanese. "That is my underwear. And therefore it is not your concern."

The Japanese embarass easily. The men blanched, glanced at each other, and scurried away in different directions.