By David Lindeman

Contributing columnist

You may (or may not) remember my efforts to educate the public about the Lindeman Galactic Rule of Increasing Time. Leaving all the complicated mathematics out of it, basically the rule states, “the older you get, the faster time goes.”

Ask anyone who has reached a certain age and they will tell you this is true.

Every morning I wake up and think, “Wait! Where did yesterday go? I just did this a few minutes ago.” The days go by like lightning.

Lately, though, I have been noticing that there seem to be some odd places in the universe that defy the Galactic Rule of Increasing Time. I think these might be some kind of time-space aberrations, but it’s worth noting them. They seem to be places where time basically stands still.

Here are some examples:

• Visit to the dentist’s office. Time slows down dramatically the second you walk in the door. A few minutes in the waiting room seem like hours. And when you actually make it to the dentist’s chair – why, I can swear hours go by but the clock says it was only a few minutes. Time never moves fast enough in the dentist’s office.

• When you’re traveling by plane to anywhere. Planes are supposed to be the fastest way to travel. Yet, when I travel through the air the days seem to last forever and I’m way more exhausted than other modes of travel, say like running a marathon or riding your bike a couple hundred miles or driving all day.

It starts in the security line, which in big airports in endless. Waiting at the gate with thousands of strangers, all who seem to walk by and cough on you or sneeze at you, adds to the anxiety. Then you get into a long metal tubes with seats made for Munchkins and breathe the recirculated air of a crowd of other people you don’t know and don’t really want to know. The Galactic Rule of Increasing Time is completely canceled by airplane travel.

• Calling the phone help line. Say your internet goes out. Or there’s a strange charge from somewhere in Mongolia on your charge card. Or maybe you have a problem with your utility bill.

Your only recourse is to make a phone call. And time stands still.

First an automated voice asks you to select a number for the person you want to talk to, and none of the numbers really match what you want. So you punch the number to talk to a random help person who is located somewhere in New Delhi. Then you have to wait. They play awful music for you while you wait, trying to get you to hang up. They throw in a few promotional bits. You think you’ve been waiting for hours and you look at the clock and it’s been five minutes.

Finally, when you get a person, they are not the right person, and they transfer you to someone else, who happens to be busy, and the music starts again. By the time I’m done with one of these calls, I’m ready to call the mental health line, but I don’t want to wait for a therapist.

• Presidential Elections. Maybe it’s just me, but I fondly remember when presidential campaigns lasted a year or so. Sure, the candidates were jockeying for position for years, but most of that was done in back rooms and behind closed doors. Now, the campaigns start as soon as an election is over. Doesn’t it seem like Donald Trump has been running for president for about 40 years? It goes on and on and on and seems to last forever. By the time Election Day comes around, I’m too tired to vote.

There could be an advantage to these black holes in the Galactic Rule of Increasing Time. Find one of them, hang out there, time will slow down and it will seem like you live longer. Then again, if it takes a dentist’s office or a TSA line or endless doses of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to make time slow down, just shoot me now! I don’t like time running away so quickly, but it turns out there are things that are worse.

David Lindeman is a Troy resident and former editor at the Troy Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected].