This was originally posted on blogger. As a little kid I always thought that five minutes more was a blessing. Five more minutes meant another round of battling legos, another game of tag, or really anything else you could think of. As the philosopher euclonho describes it, multiples of five are “holes in the time line… little pockets of handwavy-ness where you’re allowed to steal time from the universe within the bounds of social convention.”

These days, however, I know the power of five minutes. Telling someone “I’ll be there in five minutes” means that you’ll pretty much be late. It’s a dangerous thing, those five minutes, because a whole lot can happen in them, yet the whole time you have to be alert, ready, and waiting for the clock to strike midnight. On the flip side, when we say “three minutes left”  – well, that’s a scary thing too. It means that exactly 180 seconds will be ticked on a Grandfather’s clock until Doomsday arrives.
These days, amidst the Great Quaroutine, five minutes is no more time than it takes for Jack Sparrow to find whiskey on a deserted island. Five hours may be closer to the singularity euclonho describes – or perhaps five days. After all, in our memories five minutes and five days really act the same way. But then, when we sleep how far does five minutes get you? Perhaps just as far as five inches in the Space Race.