Ode to Sweet Brown
October 23, 2014
By Leigh Thomas
The other night I told this story about getting my son from school early in the name of six minutes. Six. Minutes.
He had an appointment after school, and as I hurried to pick him up I debated the merits of being 10 minutes late for the appointment versus signing him out 10 minutes early. I opted for the latter.
I went into the school office and asked to sign him out, and the frazzled receptionist replied, “School will dismiss in six minutes. Can you just wait?” (For the record, it was 10 minutes.)
As I stared at her, I thought of the wise, wise words of Internet sensation Sweet Brown: “Ain’t nobody got time fer dat.” (If you don’t know Sweet Brown, look her up and enjoy the laugh. You’re welcome.)
But instead of going all Sweet Brown on this nice lady, I smiled sweetly and said, “I really could use those six minutes.”
Do you have any idea what I can do with six minutes? Well that day, I grabbed my kid and got the hell outta dodge, bypassing the maddening car line traffic and getting to the appointment with about 60 seconds to spare.
In six minutes I can check e-mail, or make lunches, or start laundry, or make beds, or, or, or. There’s a long list of things I don’t do well, but time management and multi-tasking aren’t on it.
Somewhere between my kids being born and today, I adopted this need to fill every minute of every day, and my life became a race: I race to school, I race to work, I race back to school, I race home and race through a flurry of chores, I race to soccer practice. Hell, I even race for fun. I hop on the treadmill somewhere in the middle of all of that and race against myself.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and venture that all this “productivity” may not be the best thing. I think my heart rate might be chronically elevated and I probably don’t sleep enough, but man, I’m gettin’ it DONE. Striking items off my to-do list is like a drug, and I’m addicted. I can see it now: my kids in therapy recalling mommy blowing through the house, a tumbleweed of nervous energy.
I think there are a couple of lessons to be learned here, and you choose where you fit. For some, it’s to never underestimate what you can accomplish in six minutes. For me, it’s that sometimes you should put your ass in a chair and take a load off. But like Ms. Brown said, I “ain’t got time fer dat.” Maybe one day I will learn to reconcile the two.
