How Do You Express Time

You're picking up a friend at 4:45. What time do you tell them?


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Cyientist

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Aug 18, 2013
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My 16, 15 and 13 year old all get annoyed when I round time to the nearest 15 minutes.

"It's about 5:45."

"Dad is wrong, it's 5:42."
My 6 yr old can't understand why I do this. I hope he grows out of it, now you have me worried.

My kids will not have a good concept of time due to the number of times I respond with, "give me a minute". For some reason they don't understand that it really means 5-10 minutes. They should also realize that "give me a second" means in about a minute but less than 5, and for an unknown reason a "quick second" is going to be closer to that 5 minute mark...
 

coolerifyoudid

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Feb 8, 2013
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KC
My 16, 15 and 13 year old all get annoyed when I round time to the nearest 15 minutes.

"It's about 5:45."

"Dad is wrong, it's 5:42."
My daughter does the same thing. I think it's due to the weird precise timing of her classes in high school.

It only applies to correcting me though. If we're late to something her "5 minutes" is basically an hour.
 
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besserheimerphat

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Apr 11, 2006
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That works, for the most part.

Expanding a bit, when does "this past weekend" become "last weekend"?
"Last weekend" is a week before "this past weekend" to me, but I don't think that's as universally understood. Or sometimes I'll say "the weekend before last," again meaning the weekend that occurred 8 to 13 days ago. Anything more than 2 weeks ago/ahead and I just include the date if I need to be specific, or say "a few weeks" if I don't.
 

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