Time is relative, not static. Different species on this planet have different perceptions of time, and how quickly it seems to be flowing past.
Nothing reminds one of this more than having dogs. Conventional wisdom says that there is such at thing as "dog years," and that for every human year a dog experiences, it's as if he or she is experiencing six of our years. This turns out not to be true. Different dog breeds have vastly different life expectancies, depending on size and breed. My dogs statistically have a pro- jected lifespan that has them aging five times faster than humans age. But does that affect their *perception* of time? Not as far as I can tell. One of my dogs...let's call him Paris...lives in the same time continuum I do. Wake him up suddenly, and he's instantly awake, ready for anything. Take him on a walk and watch him get totally lost in some obsession like a passing cat, and it's *gone* from his mind thirty paces onwards. My other dog is...not like this. When asked to describe him, I often refer friends to the movie "Zoolander." Those of you who have seen the film, do you remember how Ben Stiller as Derek Zoolander specialized in "striking poses" for the camera that *looked* as if he was pondering existence deeply, but in reality was just striking a pose? That's Pippin, the smaller and more infuriating of my dogs. Infuriating occasionally because he insists on striking these poses while we're out on walks, and expecting me and Paris to react to his pose-striking as if he actually *was* pondering existence deeply. Paris can decide where to pee or poop in a heatrbeat. "Need to poop? Why not here?" seems to be his credo, as it is mine (within normal social boundaries, that is). By comparison, Pippin is working on a completely different level of time, and the perception thereof. The concept of "pooping" first seems to hit him as a vague concept, one that has very little relationship to Here And Now. But he has to stop dead in his tracks and ponder (or seem to ponder) the concept anyway. He's often upset when, after a few moments of him stopping dead in his tracks and producing nothing for all that pondering but a great photo-op, I drag him onwards. Repeat ad frustratium. It can take Pippin ten minutes from the onset of the *concept* of pooping to attain actual pooping. If the concept of "dog years" were accurate, that would mean that it takes him almost an hour (human time) longer to associate the *concept* of pooping with actual pooping than it does me, or Paris. I often catch the same looks of "What is *taking* you so long?" on Paris' face that I feel on mine. This may mean that both of us are lesser evolved than Pippin, and are just missing the "fine points" of having to sniff every square centimeter of terrain in a ten-block area before deciding that one of them "deserves" to be pooped on. Or it could indicate that Paris and I live on a more realistic, here-and-now time frame, and that heavy decisions such as where to take a dump don't necessarily have to take all day.
