The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is Sleep

Daniel is very eager to visit Auntie Ann's house - both boys are, and they have been talking about it, planning for it, and trying to extend the scope of the trip, for much of the past week.

Yesterday, Daniel was asking me if there is a "short cut" to Auntie Ann's house. I explained that the shortest way is by taking the highway, so that's what we do. But he kept pressing the matter: surely there was a way to get their faster than the route we normally take. I explained that Auntie Ann's house takes more than three hours to get to, no matter how you travel. Then he wanted to know if it also takes them three hours to get to our house; I went out on a limb, and guessed that it does, even though perhaps the northeast-bound itinerary takes much less time than its southwest-bound counterpart, rather like the way that it routinely takes less time to fly from the West Coast to the East Coast, due to the tailwind factor. Who knows - maybe it takes them fifteen minutes to get to our house...

At that point, Daniel called my bluff about the idea that it always takes over three hours to get to their house: "Then how come it was shorter when I was sleeping?"

(May 28, 2011)