It Freaked Me Out a Little

I was writing about third gravitating bodies and I needed to know the year that Henri Poincaré wrote The Third Body Problem and won that huge cash prize from King Oscar II of Sweden.

I typed “third gravitating bodies” into the Google search block. At the top of the results page was a featured snippet and something about it looked familiar. When I glanced at the source link, I saw that it was a Monday Morning Memo I had written recently.

Evidently, Google thinks I know far more about third gravitating bodies than I actually do, because they seem to be under the mistaken impression that I am an expert in the field of theoretical physics, and I can assure you that I am not.

But that’s not what freaked me out.

When I clicked the source link, it took me to a Monday Morning Memo I wrote a few months ago. I had a clear memory of writing that memo, and for some strange reason I have a particularly clear memory of creating the image at the top of the page. I created that image by selecting three different magazine covers over which I overlaid an image of the Broadway cast of Hamilton.

My memory of writing that memo and creating that artwork felt like it was only four or five weeks ago, but I knew that it was more likely four or five months.

What freaked me out was when I looked at the date of that memo.

I has been almost 6 years since I wrote it.

I felt like Rip Van Winkle.

I looked up at the door in the room where I was sitting, and waited for Rod Serling to step into that open doorframe. I could already hear his voice.

“Consider if you will, the man who stared so deeply into the void of his computer, that when he looked up, he was 6 years older. There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call The Twilight Zone.”

My friend and business partner Ray Seggern spent yesterday afternoon with me. Ray is old enough to have an adult daughter who has completed college and worked for companies like Luis Vuitton and Rolls Royce and who will soon be married. Ray is 9 years younger than me.

Shortly after he arrived for our meeting, he said, “You know how time seems to pass more quickly as you get older?”

I nodded, so he continued, “What’s the word for that? Everyone says that a year seems like a long time to a 5-year-old because it’s 20 percent of his lifetime, but that same year goes by 10 times faster for a 50-year old man because it’s only 2 percent of his lifetime. What’s the word for that?”

Ray and I sat and thought and scratched our heads and looked at each other for a long while.

Here’s why I’m writing to you today: What’s the word for that?

If you know – or even if you just made up a good word for it and are willing to share ­– send the word to indy@wizardofads.com

Your name will appear in the dictionary we are compiling.

More about that in the rabbit hole.

Indy says Aroo.

Roy H. Williams