The other day I reached for a cup with my right hand and a coffee pot in my left. Distracted, and hands full, I reached too far and tipped the cup over. The cups on the shelf have a tapered base, so it turns out it’s very easy to upset them; great looking, but maybe not as functional as they are pretty.
The handle of the coffee cup was facing me and it was tipping my way. Time seemed to stop as the mug slowed and finally came to a halt resting perfectly on its handle.
I looked at it for what felt like a long time. Improbably leaning, it felt like a snapshot, or a shot from a sequence of photos that phone cameras can take nowadays. Taken out of context, just before it fell off the shelf and shattered, frozen in time.
But it didn’t fall. It stopped. It was sitting there on the shelf, just as it wasn’t supposed to be.
I broke my wrist in a bike race a few weeks ago, and I remember the part just before I crashed. Someone passed me downhill on a bit of singletrack that was all loose soil full of big rocks. I managed to stay upright just long enough to pitch over the bars at the apex of a sharp turn. Putting my butt as far back as I could to keep the rear wheel on the ground but as much weight as possible on the front to keep traction, I skittered and teetered sideways in the dirt as the edge of my shorts rubbed the nose of my saddle, slamming on the brakes.
Then nothing. Then feeling branches and dry leaves brush my face and hearing a crunch that I knew was part of me breaking. Rolling over in crisp leaves, I saw the sky through bare trees as I held my bad wrist up with my good hand. I was in the first third of the racers, so it took a while before anyone could cross the course and check on me. Not that I could see; I was laying on the side of a hill, my head on the bottom, looking away, so I could only hear the race.
People have described the sequence of events to me. The losing control and finally regaining it felt like it took minutes, but I’m assured it was a second or two. The next part I’m told was spectacular, where was in the air with my hands out in front of me, Superman style, was zero seconds in my memory, but apparently took about as long as the part just before the crash. It was about a minute before anyone could get to me.
As grownups we just don’t usually lay down in the leaves for a minute. Normally I’m doing something, or distracted, thinking about something else, or both. Put into an unfamiliar context and situation in an unfamiliar place, and forced to just sit there with adrenaline in your blood, you pay attention in a different way. I had never paid attention to how long exactly a minute feels when it feels exactly a minute long. But it turns out that this minute was a minute long, and it felt exactly that long.
It was a pretty long time. About a minute.
If you’re the type of person who feels like life is passing you by, or everything seems to happen so fast, it might be interesting to put yourself in situations that are unusual for you. Being out of control on your bike will take way too long. Expecting a coffee cup to fall when it doesn’t might seem might take forever. Laying on the November ground deep in leaves for a minute might be exactly what a minute feels like.