An Oddity

[tandem]

A strange thing seemed to have happened to me on the way to my girlfriend's house back in the summer of 1961. I shall never forget that experience. I was transported from one place to another in less than 60 seconds flat.
I called my girlfriend who lived a 45 minute walk away and said I would walk to her house.
She asked me not to because it was too hot.
I said, "I will be okay."
I stepped out the door of my home and a minute later was standing in front of her door.

ANY EXPLANATIONS: And , no I have never been a drinker or used recreational drugs.

[Steven Howard]

Are you sure it's wise to be looking for an explanation so soon after the event? Maybe in the heat of the moment you've overlooked or omitted some important detail that will be made clear with the passage of time.

[sophia8]

Get your girlfriend to come here and give us her take on your story.

[RenaissanceBiker]

You crossed a time zone westward and gained an hour, then wasted 16 minutes at a XXX theater "getting ready."

[Humphreys]

Are you sure it's wise to be looking for an explanation so soon after the event? Maybe in the heat of the moment you've overlooked or omitted some important detail that will be made clear with the passage of time.

It's not his fault, when he started typing it was 1961, 60 seconds later he was here.

[kitakaze]

A boner? :D

[Humphreys]

All joking aside, I think it's quite clear you entered into a parallel Universe when another you had left 44 minutes earlier.

You are still in that Universe. That is not your original girlfriend mate.

[kitakaze]

Was the walk back reaaaally looooong?

[aggle-rithm]

A strange thing seemed to have happened to me on the way to my girlfriend's house back in the summer of 1961. I shall never forget that experience. I was transported from one place to another in less than 60 seconds flat.
I called my girlfriend who lived a 45 minute walk away and said I would walk to her house.
She asked me not to because it was too hot.
I said, "I will be okay."
I stepped out the door of my home and a minute later was standing in front of her door.

ANY EXPLANATIONS: And , no I have never been a drinker or used recreational drugs.

Hmmmm... that's a tough one...

Since it's physically impossible for you to be mistaken or lying then...

It's magic!

[aggle-rithm]

Maybe you normally took an unnecessarilly long route to her house. Like she lived across the street, and you walked 50 blocks to take a bus.

By sheer chance, you stumbled upon an easier way!

....

Nah. Magic is more likely.

;)

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Acid was a lot easier to get in the 60's...

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

A strange thing seemed to have happened to me on the way to my girlfriend's house back in the summer of 1961. I shall never forget that experience. I was transported from one place to another in less than 60 seconds flat.
I called my girlfriend who lived a 45 minute walk away and said I would walk to her house.
She asked me not to because it was too hot.
I said, "I will be okay."
I stepped out the door of my home and a minute later was standing in front of her door.

ANY EXPLANATIONS: And , no I have never been a drinker or used recreational drugs.
I'm not sure if you're actually looking for a rational explanation or a 'OMG DUDEZ YR MAGIK!!11!one!' response, but I'll assume the former:

It's all about focusing attention elsewhere. You had made that walk many times before, you did not have to concentrate on doing it. You could therefore focus your mind on other things.

I drive 200kms a day to and from work, and I have done this route for about a year. My mind tends to wander as it is. I can't tell you how many times I have pulled out of the garage, then pulled into the parking lot of my work and realized that I have no recollection whatsoever of the past hour.

Even if you 'remember' looking at your watch and realizing that only a minute had passed, memory is far from perfect. I have a friend who absolutely, in all honesty, swears that as a child he flew down the stairs. I don't think he is lying. So was he really able to fly?

[fishbait]

Not much detailed information here except for "in less than 60 seconds flat". How do you know it was less than 60 seconds? Did you look at your watch when you stepped out your door noting the exact minute then again when you arrived?

You seem to be convinced that you were "transported" in some way. Do you believe that you did not walk there?

Which do you believe is more reliable and consistent; the Laws of Physics or the ability of the human brain to perceive and recall precisely when the body is stressed by walking a long distance in excessive heat?

Can your girlfriend verify this your account?

[Humphreys]

Did you run really fast?

[Reno]

Scotty beamed you.

[Miss Anthrope]

The aliens didn't want you to get overheated?

[Overman]

Obviously you Tesseracted. Just as Meg Murry.

[Orangutan]

I shall never forget that experience.

My I suggest that assertation is not fact, and you did indeed forget the experience.
;)

[Dazed]

This is quite obviously just an excuse to use the words "my girlfriend" in a sentence.

What did she think about your missing time? And was your butt sore afterwards?

[CaptainManacles]

You could have had some kind of seizure, or something similar. Losses of time are not unheard of.

[Starthinker]

I wasn't even born in '61, so it wasn't me.

[RichardR]

The most likely explanation is that you don’t remember it the way it actually happened. False memories can seem very real.

[Formerly]

Obviously you Tesseracted. Just as Meg Murry.

*comes out of lurking to give you a thumbs up on that reference*

[Ryan O'Dine]

Some years ago I came down with a raging case of salmonella food poisoning from undercooked turkey at a college cafeteria (when a doctor asked if anything had tasted funny, I told him “the stuffing”).

I wasn’t in the college clinic for a day when they sent me on my one and only ambulance ride to a hospital where I spent the next ten days on an IV feeling like death warmed over. (Dozens had fallen ill, but I was maybe the second one hospitalized.)

Afterward, I was with my family and some cousins describing the events. I told them I had been at the clinic for a WEEK before going to the hospital. My parents immediately corrected me -- no, it had only been a day. I was shocked. I mean, just dumbstruck. My memory had me writhing in hell on a clinic cot for an entire week.

In conclusion, my friends, yes -- memory is a funny, funny, funny thing.

[Loss Leader]

I have the answer:

You lived on a small round island. You usually walked to your girlfriend's to the right and it took you forty-five minutes to walk around the circumference of the island. That day, you walked to the left and it took you only one minute.

That was easy.

Ask me the one about the knife made of ice.

[Checkmite]

Obviously you Tesseracted. Just as Meg Murry.


:D :D :D

[EternalSceptic]

A strange thing seemed to have happened to me on the way to my girlfriend's house back in the summer of 1961. I shall never forget that experience. I was transported from one place to another in less than 60 seconds flat.
I called my girlfriend who lived a 45 minute walk away and said I would walk to her house.
She asked me not to because it was too hot.
I said, "I will be okay."
I stepped out the door of my home and a minute later was standing in front of her door.

ANY EXPLANATIONS: And , no I have never been a drinker or used recreational drugs.

I guess you were simply "absent" due to the heat and maybe your physical condition in this moment. I have experienced similar things during my life where my sense of time passing by was totally wrong, but there was always a simple and natural explanation (tired, sunglare, distracted by thinking hard about something, sinking into a dreamlike state, even sort of "sleeping" during a walk I had done very often)

And yes, as others stated: Memory is a really Weird Thing (Tm). My memory is the very last thing I trust (except of truthers and SB of course :))

[tube]

Obviously you Tesseracted. Just as Meg Murry.

You know where this is going don't you....?

TIMECUBE.

[chillzero]

I think the clue is with the heat.

One of them had changed their clock for summertime, and the other had not.

[Azrael 5]

Is this one of those lateral thinking puzzles?

The answer is her front door was outside your house,having been replaced days earlier,and you kindly offered to garage it for her.

Easy.

[strathmeyer]

What about time shifts caused by differences in elevation?

[tandem]

Interesting answers.

[Humphreys]

The most likely answer is that it was a

[Humphreys]

ime blip cause by quantumic flunctations.

[Cuddles]

Ooo, I know, you live at the top of a skyscraper and she lives at the bottom. It normally takes 45 minutes to catch a lift down, but one day the cable snapped.

Alternatively, some kind of motorised vehicle was involved.

[Soapy Sam]

Your watch stopped.

[Sean]

The heat could have affected your memory or your consciousness. I had it happen with alcohol when I was in college, where that mechanism that records memory stops working and, looking back, it feels like you just popped up somewhere. Heat could have the same effect.


Even if you 'remember' looking at your watch and realizing that only a minute had passed, memory is far from perfect. I have a friend who absolutely, in all honesty, swears that as a child he flew down the stairs. I don't think he is lying. So was he really able to fly?

I used to think that too. It must have been a recurring dream I was having as a kid. First time I've heard it from someone else.

[gerdbonk]

A 45 minute walk when taking the bridge route. With the drought, you can cut across the dry riverbed.

[aggle-rithm]

She normally surrounds the house with booby-traps, but this time she forgot to set them.

[Causality]

That's just the way the brain works. Everyone experiences that while driving, where we have no recollection of driving a certain part of the road, but we seem to make it through safely.

It has to do with the conscious/subconscious activities of the brain. We actually do a lot of thinking and being below the level of conscious thought. Some neuroscientists think it's a hierarchical process where novel input (things that we haven't experienced before) are pushed to the top of the hierarchy, while mundane things like walking or driving stay at the lower levels. The perception of time is a key part of consciousness (which by the way, is lost under anesthesia) so if you were walking along in a generally unaware or distracted state, you could easily lose a few minutes.

[JoeTheJuggler]

I was transported from one place to another in less than 60 seconds flat.
Well I have been transported from one place to another in a lot less than 60 seconds.

[RSLancastr]

Your watch was running reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally slow.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Or perhaps the unit of measure for this unknown distance ("a 45 minute walk away") was in terms of a caterpillar's walk and the place was actually next door.

The troll--I mean original poster--is pretty scarce on details.

[tandem]

Some response were thoughtful and mature attempts at an explanation. Others were failed attemps at "humor."

[Kariboo]

Some response were thoughtful and mature attempts at an explanation. Others were failed attemps at "humor."

So, what do YOU think happened?

[Soapy Sam]

Tandem-
If we reject the possibility that you are lying or misremembering, there appear to be two possibilities:-
Either your ability to register the passage of time malfunctioned or time malfunctioned.
Given the anecdotal evidence of someone I do not know, which would you expect me to think more probable?

[JoeTheJuggler]

Tandem, we'd need LOTS more specific information about what you are claiming before we can make anything more than jokes or wild guesses. What exactly are you claiming?

Going from one point to another within 60 seconds tells me nothing. Here--I'll go from one point to another in about 3 seconds.

Wow! I'm back. (Do you get it--we really need to know how far apart the 2 points are.)

How far (in a linear measure like miles or kms or even city blocks) do you claim to have gone in 60 seconds? Was this trip by foot? How do you know it was 60 seconds? (Quite a few of the responses have been that you simply lost track of time which happens to all of us.)

[JoeTheJuggler]

At least some of us thought maybe you were posing a riddle.

[Burner]

Some response were thoughtful and mature attempts at an explanation. Others were failed attemps at "humor."

Was your girlfriend hot?