Twelve Minutes

That’s all it takes.

You can do a lot in twelve minutes. You can…

- Get the mail  
- Make a sandwich
- Call a friend
- Take a power nap (My “power” naps are 2-3 hours, so sleep at your own risk.)
- Listen to a couple songs
- Start a family
- Ruin your life
- Get stranded on Mars

Yeah. There’s a lot of things you can do in twelve minutes.

You know, let’s start at the beginning.

It’s a warm June night. I’m sitting out in the backyard by the pool, talking to a friend on the phone. We’re having a nice moment. Then my dad comes out, smirking like he knows something I don’t.

“What?” I say.
“Wrap it up with your little friend. We’re going to the movies,” he says.
“Movies? Tonight?”
“Yep. The Martian. Matt Damon.”

He’s cool like that. I got tons of stories of him surprising me with fun life stuff.

So, anyway, he got tickets, right? And he knew I had been wanting to see it.

Matt Damon. Space. Mars. The Holy Trinity.

The movie theater’s downtown. A forty-five minute drive. Matt Damon would come onto screen in an hour. Got nothin’ but time—Dad’s phrase, but I’m coining it… yet again. Sorry I steal all your thunder, Dad. We are Thunder Buddies after all. And you’re, like, my dad, so you hafta give me all your golden nuggets. Love you!

I finish my phone call and go inside. Then I get a text from Dad.

-HTFU! In car. Got one hour. I’m hungry. My friend Jack’s calling me.

I shout bye to my mom, run out the door, and then we leave.

Oh, there’s nothing like topping ninety on the highway while eating a Breakfast Jack. It’s the little things.

Sidebar: I tend to associate my dad with nostalgia—the good kind. I can look at him and travel back to a simpler time, a time where things were without worry and spontaneity was a familiar friend. As I get older, I find myself pressing pause on my life and taking a moment to think about all the good memories my dad and I have. We share a lot of those. I mean, I could literally write a thousand-page book about all the fun shit we’ve done… and the bond we have. Dad, I know you say you’ve got about ten years left (it’s really thirty to forty; he likes to joke), so let’s go take another trip and talk about things, yeah? I vote for Big Bend. Remember that mountain lion…

So, we arrive at the theater a bit late. The damn traffic. You know how it goes. But we don’t think much of it. What the hell happens the first few minutes of a movie, anyway?

We walk in, do the whole ticket/teller/snack/bathroom thing, then enter our theater.

First thing we see? Matt Damon stranded on Mars.

WTF.

We check the time. Twelve minutes.

That’s all it took. Twelve-effin’-minutes.

Well, to this day, it’s a running gag. Anytime my dad and I are late to something—and we’ve obviously missed something important—we look at each other and say, “Twelve minutes.” Like I said, it’s the little things.

It was a fantastic movie. Kept me on the edge of my seat. Matt Damon as an astronaut, science-ing the shit out of everything. Can’t go wrong with that. Also, Ridley Scott as director. Double whammy.

So, go on. Go make a sammy. Do something to ruin your life. Or maybe start a family. Or get stuck on a foreign planet. Either way you’ll have to science the shit out of something.

And twelve minutes… is all it takes. What’s the worst that could happen?