Time isn't elastic.

Many years ago when I was a starving graduate student living in New York I had a girlfriend who was slightly mad. I don't mean in a clinical sense, but just a little out of whack, which suited me because I was just coming out of a long period of being quite strange myself. We had the same birthday (different years though) and she introduced me to the world of showtunes, among other things. (K - on the odd chance that you're reading this, I should tell you that that thing you said to me on the uptown bus - the thing I responded to in a way that made you so angry - it was true.)

She was an achitecture student, and was very good at spatial things. But she had a real blindspot about how time worked. For example - and this did happen a few times - if we had to leave the apartment at, say, 8pm to be somewhere for something, she thought that at 730pm it was quite feasible to put on a load of laundry (coin-operated washers and dryers in the basement). A load took 30 minutes to wash, then 45 minutes to dry. So with a bit of toing and froing that's about an hour and 25 minutes.

So, at 8pm when I'm standing at the door, keys in my hand and getting anxious, she's down in the basement wondering why it didn't work. At some level she thought she could, through sheer force of will, control the flow of time. She felt that just by trying really really hard she could make the hour and 25 minute task only take half an hour, and that not thinking like this was a character flaw on my part.

This force-of-will thing was understandable as she'd had to overcome fairly severe dyslexia to get through undergrad, and I was tremendously impressed by how dedicated and bloody-minded she was. But when it came to time she didn't realise that it wasn't just another obstacle to overcome. As I heard once, in a vaguely-related context: "Gravity, it's not just another good idea, it's a law".

The first few months of our relationship were characterised by us being late for everything, sometimes catastrophically so. I was worn almost down to my core by anxiety. Part of what I liked about her was this blind certainly about things, even if she was wrong, so I was unable to take her task on it - and she was a much stronger character than me. I see most things as shades of gray, so I'm very susceptible to being led by someone who's a bit maniacal. She was fanatical about multi-tasking (even before the word was invented) and didn't see anything wrong with putting makeup on and having breakfast while driving, and she once half-jokingly said she thought sleep was 'wasteful'. No, sleep's wonderful. And multi-tasking just doesn't work. I was standing at a urinal last week next to a colleague and he was talking on his mobile while peeing. You really can't do two things at once if you want to do either of them properly, and I'm surprised he didn't end up with a wet trouser leg. (By the way, if you are peeing while on the phone and the person you're talking to gets suspicious, it's best to say you're washing your hands. There.)

Eventually she realised that if I was in charge of time and she was in charge of space we'd do much better. Which when I think about it now was a very sensible arrangement, and philosophically quite appealing too. But the whole thing cratered for other, unrelated reasons.