February got the short end of the stick, didn’t it? Shorter than all the senior months. In fact, it wasn’t called to the party at all till the 7th Century BCE. January and February were squeezed into the guest list later, and to stop them from cribbing, they were propped up in the beginning of the calendar. And because there weren’t enough days to hand out, February had to be shrunk.
What’s your point? Cut it short.
My point is about cutting it short, actually. About how impatient we’re all becoming. Despite winning the top three Grammys this year, Adele and her songwriter were cut off rather rudely, pitching them into darkness mid-sentence, mid-smile, while the spotlight shifted to somewhere else because, you see, ‘the show must go on’.
Nothing wrong with that. Why waste time?
What’s a waste of time? Google produces 3,16,00,00,000 results in 0.19 seconds. Asking a neighbour how her knee is produces one result in half an hour, but you get a cup of tea and a ‘ jeete raho ’ out of it. A waste of time is relative, really.
Are you accusing us of being self-centred or bird-brained?
I wouldn’t dream of that. Birds have more neurons packed into their brains than mammals have. Let’s climb lower down the food chain. The average human’s attention span is less than a goldfish. Recent research showed that human attention span was eight seconds, while the goldfish focussed for nine.
That reminds me, I need to check the gold bullion rate, since we’re talking about gold.
Are we? I was talking about goldfish.
That’s a Jackie Chan movie, right? I remember someone sent me a one-para review of top action films. See, that’s what I mean about short. Why sit through two hours if you can get the gist in two seconds?
Why indeed? The movie was Goldfinger , by the way. It was Bond, not Chan.
Okay. I get so much info nowadays, I forget. So, you were saying about your finger? Can you cut it short? I’m running late.
I’d stop at cutting my finger short, if you don’t mind. I was pointing out, or trying to point out, how we’re always running late. We have no time.
Seriously. I have a billion things to do. Do take care of your fingers, then. And your knee. And your neighbour’s bird. And ping me details of that February party you started out talking about.
Where Jane De Suza, the author of Happily Never After talks about the week’s quirks, quacks and hacks
