Dear wife Jennie startled me a week or so ago with this revelation, ‘By the time the boys are done riding the bus, I will have spent something like 21 days of my life, waiting for the bus.?
Jennie calculated both Shamus and Sean would ride the bus up until the 11th grade.
Yikes.
That’s dedication to her children. I sure hope they thank her sometime during their lives. Jen has a very scientific brain. She’s very meticulous and accurate. In other words, she’s smart. She’s a scientist in training, so her pondering life’s little questions is perfectly understandable. Unfortunately for you, her curiosity also got me thinking (which is always a scary proposition, so bear with me.)
Have you ever asked yourself, ‘How much time do I spend doing the stuff I have to do??
If you haven’t, relax, you just did. What am I blathering on about? This — how much time is spent, say, brushing our teeth? Hmmmm?
If you consider we brush our teeth at least twice a day, at two minutes a pop, you will come up with this bit of information: We brush our teeth 1,460 minutes a year.
If you started brushing your teeth regularly at age four, by the time you’re 30, you will have spent 37,960 minutes brushing your teeth. That’s 26.3 days brushing. Feel better about yourself?
If you’re 40, you’ve brushed 36.5 days. At 50, nearly 47 days; at 70, 67 days. If you’re 80-years-old, you will have spent 110,960 hours of your life (or 77 days) brushing your teeth.
By the time you’re 90, you’ve brushed your teeth to nubs — get some brand new, white dentures as you deserve it.
Ever the mathmagician, here’s how I answer that question: 4 minutes x 365 days = 1,460 minutes a year. Multiply 1,460 by the number of years, divide by 60 (minutes) and then by 24 (hours) to get the number of days.
Continuing on this line of thinking, I also calculated shaving time for guys. (Gals, you’re currently on your own in this endeavor. Us guys have a face and a neck to shave. You chicks have two legs, underarms and umm things to shave. I don’t have a clue as to the time you spend. If you want me to figure it out, e-mail me your numbers and I’ll add it to next week’s column).
If you shave once a day, you spend five minutes a day whisking them whiskers away. That equates to 1,825 minutes a year or, about one and a quarter days a year shaving. That’s why you’ll notice the picture attached to this column is of me with a beard. I grow a beard to maximize my breathing time on this earth. By ‘shaving? time off of the time I spend shaving, I have more time to do the things I like to do — like sitting on the couch and watching TV.
I am a productive American.
If we spend 10 minutes a day showering and another five minutes doing, er-umm, other things in the bathroom, at the end of a year, we will have spent 3.8 days worth of time showering and, er-umm, other things. So, if you add up all that time and then factor in some extra time for brushing your hair (if you have any, you’re lucky to have extra time on your hands to do with what you wish), I figure we spend between an entire six to seven days a year in the bathroom. That’s between one and two percent of our life doing bathroom things.
Interesting . . . so . . .
. . . If you sleep eight hours a night, that equates to 121.6 days of sleep a year.
. . . If you work a 40-hour week, that equals 86.6 days a year of work.
. . . If it takes you 15 minutes a day to drive to work, that means you spend 30 minutes a day driving — or five and half days a year of driving to and from work.
. . . If you spend an hour a day eating (total for breakfast, lunch and dinner) you spend 15.2 days eating.
And, if you add all that up, I can account for 64.6 percent of your year, roughly 236 days. How you spend the other 3,096 hours (129 days) of the year is between you and your significant other. If she’s okay with it, so am I.
E-mail your thoughts and comments to Don, dontrushmedon@charter.net