Seconds

[Whitey]

Well it seems I'm the only one posting here xD. I'm in the most advanced writing class at our school...so I've got an essay (or draft of one) due every week. We've just started a definition essay and I hapen to have enjoyed writing this one and enjoy reading it aloud a lot so....it's about Seconds. <333

It’ll just be a second…

Such a simple term, the second, used so much in daily conversation. People are constantly saying, “Hold on a second” or “give me a second” or “I’ll be back in a second.” A second goes by so fast no one really even takes notice. It seems that in modern times we’ve lost our respect for the second. We’ve converted it to a slang term with no real time constraints. In reality, a second is “equal to ‘9,192,631,770 oscillations of the electromagnetic radiation corresponding to a particular quantum change in the superfine energy level of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom,’” according to The Encyclopedia of Useless Information. This has been true since 1967 when super-accurate atomic clocks were being created. So why is it we’ve been disregarding such a simple measure of time?
Perhaps it’s because we see it as inferior to other units of time. There isn’t anything you can really get done in a second, so we’ve thrown out using the real time of a second. Or maybe we just want others to think we can get things done faster than normal so they look up to us. Either way the Romans and Babylonians who were the masterminds behind the second are certainly cringing at the sight of such disrespect to their unit of measure. Second isn’t the only unit we use so loosely either; a jiffy has an actual amount of time labeled to it too. It differs from place to place, profession to profession, but “More recently, the jiffy became standardized as 1/100 second” (The Encyclopedia of Useless Information).
The only thing anyone can really do in a second is blink their eyes; yet we use the term for things which will obviously be a minutes long. For example, you would be having a conversation with someone when your phone rings. You glance down to see it’s your brother calling and you know it’s going to be important because he never calls unless it is. You’d turn to the other person and say, “I’m sorry, it’ll only be a second.” You go on to talk to your brother for five minutes. According to its definition, a second isn’t five minutes; it isn’t even half a minute. We need a new word that could be used to describe an extended, and unknown, period of time. Otherwise we’ll simply just keep on misusing such a wonderful unit.
Next time you hear someone say “I’ll be back in a second,” perhaps you could respond, “Wow, I didn’t know you could move at ‘9,192,631,770 oscillations of the electromagnetic radiation corresponding to a particular quantum change in the superfine energy level of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom,’ that’s amazing.”