A Vast Improvement on "Are We there yet?"

Yesterday, we went to Cousin David's birthday party in Boston, and Daniel was very impatient to get there.  When we first started out on the road, he asked how long it would take:  when I told him, he announced to me that "Every minute counts."  These time-remaining checks occurred at various intervals over the course of the trip, and when he asked and I told him we were about 50 minutes from our destination, he recognized that 50 is five tens, and then added, "Well at least I can count it by tens."

The Russian Math classes suddenly seemed much more obviously to be money well spent.

Some rapper I heard on the radio once - I don't remember his name - had a quip in the middle of one of his raps that I always thought was useful in life:  "Don't hate the game - analyze it."

A quantitative analyst in the back seat - even an impatient one - is really much more interesting to have around than a classic traveling youth choir performing the intermission-free Are We There Yet Opera.  And he's a much happier passenger, because his intellect provides something to whittle away the time creatively and divert focus from the pain of distance between Cousin's party and the current mile-marker on the Interstate.

(October 12, 2013)