If I Could Stop Time . . .

Imagine yourself with the ability to stop and start time at your whim. Snap your fingers and everything stops around you, yet you alone retain freedom of motion. Finger snap again and movement commences. What would you do if you could stop time and then start it back up at your convenience?

Maybe I’m an oddball, but I get this very strong desire to stop time when I am in a snack food establishment such as an ice cream store, yogurt shop, or bakery. If I could stop time I would gorge on the yogurt and assorted toppings, the wonderful olfactory peaking baked goods behind the bakery’s glass counter, and milk shakes and multiple ice cream scoops with chocolate coated waffle cones.

Silly thing is, I have little hankering to freely consume the prepackaged goods, those encumbered with the UPC tracking codes, under these same imagined time-stoppage intervals. Soda pops and fancy bottled teas in the beverage refrigerator I say ‘No thanks’. Ice cream sandwiches and It’s-It ice cream treat in the stand-alone ice cream cooler, ‘Thank you, no,’ again I say.

Delicious, all, undeniably so, but little desire to abscond with these. Maybe its the idea that the missing prepackaged items with UPC codes could mess up a business owner’s inventory tracking. Possibly even cause an employee to falsely get nailed for alleged employee dishonesty on account of my weakness. The loose merchandise such as the frozen yogurt that is dispensed at the flip of a lever seems almost a temptress. Scoops of ice cream from the five gallon tubs, ‘Who’ll miss two scoops,’ says I. I might even employ a courtesy hand washing before engaging the tubs.

The idea of stopping time to take a nap or get in some bonus reading is also appealing, but curiously not as strong as the pull of the free desserts.

I guess I would need to rotate the merchants, should I be able to cultivate this ‘time-stoppage’ ability, so as not to decimate the supplies of any single store. I mean, I’d be in it for an occasional treat, not to crush someone’s bottom line . . . or my appetite for supper.


Feel free to chime in on when you’d implement your time stoppage.
-klem