Five minutes is often longer than many people spend making love.

[Bill Cady]

Can you wait five minutes?

That’s not a very long time. The average white male in the United States lives 75.6 years, 5.2 years less than the average white woman. It’s the reason we have so many of those nasty cats. Her man dies first, so the woman needs someone to bitch and carp at the rest of the trip. Dogs won’t put up with it.

Still, there are 288 segments five minutes long in every day, so the average guy will still have 7,947,072 chunks of time that long in his life. Since women live 7% longer, they have even more surplus to allocate.

BTW, our country ranks 38^th on the list of greatest longevity, so we still have a lot of ground to cover before we catch up with Japan. In any event, five minutes isn’t a heckuva lot of time. It’s more than you’ll need to read this blog, as an example, which takes roughly three minutes out of your day. Way back when I started these posts, it was a lot longer, but these days I try to make each piece manageable and digestible. The longer stuff I leave to the novels I write. Still, there are different ways to measure the length of a five minute span.

That may sound a little goofy, but the only drugs I do are with a prescription and none of ‘em make me hallucinate. The oddities of my past, with an accent on the last eight years of my life, have shown me that much is true. If you question my opinion, make a comparison. Five minutes of making love is a lot different than five minutes spent waiting in the doctor’s office. Being boldly honest, five minutes is often longer than many people spend making love and it’s a rare exception if the medico gets you in that soon after the appointment time.

Here’s one you can take a stab at, but I predict you’ll fail if you’re less than 50 years old. Wait five minutes to scratch an itch next time you get one. It’ll probably drive you nuts! Compare that to waiting five minutes longer before you eat. In the first case, you won’t even be able to think of anything else until you make it go away. As far as dinner goes, unless you’re already ravenous when the meal is served, the only negative will be the food isn’t be as hot.

One place it makes a tremendous difference, however, is when you’re homeless. Those 288 five minute slots sort of double for a homeless guy. Yet, in some spots, they’re cut in half, or worse, but it doesn’t balance out in the end. He has to be up each day much earlier than the “human population” so he can stay out of your way. He can only be places at certain times of the day, and has limitations on how long he can stay. Other locations he visits from necessity put him at risk, sometimes even in danger, just for being there, but he has to go. Can’t stay away, even if it might cause problems.

The end of the day for a homeless guy is also based on you and what you want. He can’t go to sleep too early, even if he’s all worn out, because he’s forced to plan the when and where, always based on not pissing you off, the “homed” population. Even then, if he crashes in a spot against the rules, he may well be awakened by a cop’s spotlight in his eyes. It means a ticket, which will later mean jail, and those five minute spots are at least two hours apiece. I guess it’s true, then. Five minutes ain’t just five minutes, depending on who and what you are.

Another way to measure it would be spending five minutes in conversation with a homeless guy. It’ll seem to be over with before you know it. Better yet, you might learn something.

I’m just sayin’.

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