Submitted by ETC on Sat, 03/01/2008 - 18:46.
Time lapses in discourse are often meant to hurry along the reader's experience of the story, to edit out the boring, unecessary information. Time lapses in life are exactly the opposite--they tend to condense the events we most enjoy.
Today, for example, I led a trip to Cedar Key to go kayaking. We paddled, explored a graveyard, paddled, and ate lunch on the beach before paddling back to mainland. All this took four full hours--and yet it seemed like only one. We then spent an hour meandering the tiny town--yet it seemed like only 15 minutes. We were with friends and had found huge "small" ice creams for $1.34 (including topping), the weather was beautiful, and no one was contemplating homework yet.
In recounting today's events to my friends, I'll surely go into detail about the fun times we had--attempting to draw out those gone-all-too-quickly experiences into a longer memory. Of course, I'll skip over the driving time and bathroom time--that's what discourse time lapses are for, after all.
