We'll Be Using a More Specific Meaning of "Moments" in a Jiffy

Have you ever noticed that it seems like a lot of people around nowadays seem to make cursory, meaningless observations and kind of speak in sort of vague, sweeping generalities, like, more-ish than, say, back in the day?

I stumbled upon this powerful insight into mankind, probably one of the grandest and most important of our generation, while drinking margaritas and trying to rent Wave Runners on the beach in Cabo San Lucas with my brother and sister about 4 or 5 years ago.

The profound nugget of universal truth and wisdom dawned on me while I was licking the salt off the plastic cup my margie had come in and contemplating what the jet-ski operator had said when we asked about renting--"Just one moment."

It was then I realized: what in the name of Buddha's jelly rolls is a "moment"?

This post might be able to shed some light the subject, but it might take a few moments. In a jiffy, however, we will have delved into the vaguaries of human speech, especially English, but especially all languages and hopefully determined whether these generalities are a good thing serving a useful purpose, or "no bueno," to borrow a lifeguarding term.

By the way, did you know that "jiffy" actually has a non-fake, scientific definition? I was discussing the concept of "moments" the other evening, and it was brought to my attention that a "jiffy" is a real thing, not just another vague expression--it began as a measurement of the speed of light, and originally was used to describe the time it took light to travel 1 centimeter, which, if you know anything about light, is a pretty f-ing short and fast interval of time.

You actually kind of have to wonder why they even bothered to come up with a measurement like that--how often do you need to describe something that occurred in the time it took light to travel 1 centimeter? Light travels at 299,792, 458 METERS per second, which according to math means it travels at 29,979,245,800 CENTIMETERS per second, which just seems like a useless time measurement. I mean, how often are you having a conversation, and you think to yourself, "damn, if only there were a word to describe this thing that happened to me that only took roughly 3.33564095 x e-11 seconds? If only there were a term out there!"

Well, turns out you're not alone. Some dude by the name of Gilbert Newton Lewis back in the year 1900 felt he had so many stories that took place in that short amount of time that he felt the need to coin a term for it, partly because he was a geek and partly because his listeners probably got tired of hearing him end his stories with, "and it only took 3.33564095 x e-11 seconds for me to show that Irish asshole exactly where he could stuff that railroad spike--I guess next time he'll think twice before sneaking into my home and looking through my wife's bloomers."

I know, the end of that story is out of context, and I agree, it sounds like an intriguing tale and we all want to hear the rest of it, but that is for another blog post. The point is that after he came up with the term, Lewis could just say it took him "a jiffy" to show the Irish asshole where to stuff the railroad spike.

And since then, we've all been throwing around the term "jiffy" to describe all of our stories that took place in a duration of time that most of our brains can't even comprehend. "Jiffy" also has been used to describe units of time in such fields as electronics, computers, and physics. If you want to know more about the term "jiffy", you are a nerd, but click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiffy_(time).

Anyway, sorry I digressed for a moment. Or a few moments.

As I was saying, the word "moment" comes up a lot in conversation, especially, it seems, in the service industry. We've all heard waiters,  tech support operators, magicians, bank tellers, butlers,  M.C.'s, window washers, tailors, and the robotic voices who answer when you call to check your credit card balance, say the words "in a few moments," or, "one moment please."

Let's start there. What is the difference between "a few moments," and "one moment?" When do they know when one moment is not enough, and a few are actually needed? I guess at some point, one moment is insufficient time, and the task at hand can only be accomplished in a few whole moments.

This raises another question: why does it always have to jump from "one" moment to "a few" moments? Does no task in the human repitoire take exactly 2 moments? Or even when it's going to take 2+ moments, why is no one ever more specific than "a few?" Why not 3, or 7, or 26 moments?

I think the issue is clearly that nobody actually knows just how long one moment is as a measurement of time elapse.

In my experience, it seems that "one" moment can last anywhere from 1 to 10 "minutes" [if you are willing to accept that by "minute" I refer to "Earth minutes," (meaning 60 seconds, or 1/525,600th of a year, (if that's how you choose to measure a year instead of daylights, sunsets, midnights or cups of coffee, or love, as the play Rent suggests) and not "New York" minutes" which is much shorter, almost instantaneous, or as it seems Johnny Carson observed, "the time it takes for a Manhattan light to turn green and the car behind you to honk"]. Strangely, though, "a few" moments has been used to mean anywhere from 10, to 45 minutes, or even up to an entire Earth (as opposed to New York) hour if used by the more audacious service providers, mostly customer service phone agents.

This does little by way of helping us put a precise measurement on the time unit of one "moment." There is the very strong chance, nay likelihood, that the term is vague by nature, and it's purpose seems to be a stalling mechanism or a buffer that these service-providers can use to hide behind when something delays completion of the requested task.

However, I think it's high time that we demand more concrete and descriptive use of "moment" in our daily lives, from ourselves as well as the McDonald's order takers. And instead of waiting for Math to give us a well-defined system, I say we make one right now.

And by we, I mean me. That's right, I'm the modern day Gibson Newton Lewis.

I have looked into some possible systems to describe moments. As I alluded to before, the play Rent apparently has the idea that one "moment" equals .998858447488584474 "minutes" because the line of the song "Seasons of Love" goes like this: "525,600 minutes/525,000 moments so dear." I don't know why that playwrite thought the ratio of minute : moment was so close to but not quite 1:1. It could be that he has actually stumbled upon an esoteric mathematical formula, although I sort of suspect it might have had something to do with the fact that it was simply easier to write lyrics that way.

However, I don't like that system. 1:1 is too boring, clearly not correct because people don't mean "one minute" when they say "1 moment", and if they did, that would just be redundant--the last thing the English language needs is another synonym out there confusing all of us and making our Thesaur-i that much longer, killing hundreds of trees in the process.

So, from now on, "one moment" is going to be mean "8.5319 minutes" according to math I don't want to bore you with.

This should be a precise system as I discussed earlier, thus if something is going to take 8.5319 minutes, we can say, "just a moment," and if it will be 17.0638 minutes, we can say "it'll be ready in 2 moments"; but, if it will 10 minutes, we should say, "I'll be with you in 1.1720728 moments."

This is our first step to becoming a less lazy and more . . . what do you call that thing when you use your brain . . . . think-ful society.

Anyway, good day to you all. I will talk to you again in approximately 168.7783494 moments.

PEACE Y'ALL!

MikeeP