The Significance Of Significant Time

Every time I start to write my “Gerald “The Stroller” McCann” post, I keep find myself forced to explain some facts in a detail that start to make the post too long and cumbersome.

For these interruptions, I ask for your forgiveness and understanding.

The explanations of these details have, in exclusive, to do with allowing well intentioned readers to follow my line of thought, and certainly not for trying to bring to reason the "Stilldontcees” or the “Thick-Skinned-Lion Watchers”.

The first are the one’s that permanently retort to every explanation with an “I still don’t see how/why/what…” in a dilatory and deviant effort to waste one’s patience.

The latter are those that when showed a picture of a hippo do reply with the usual hypocritical “it proves nothing, as it could well be a grey thick skinned lion that happened to shave that particular morning…”

For both I have no patience or consideration.

Please don’t mistake the “Stilldontcees” with people who, in good faith, ask to me clarify something I said.

Disagreement is, obviously, accepted.

Questions are welcome and debate is the helm through which is steered downstream the ship of truth.

To exemplify, the comments that I'm posting below, from people who seem to disagree with me, and are entitled to do so, and respected by me for that.

But when you, exhausted of explaining the obvious, get a sudden urge to bite off a bit of your computer screen, then you know that you’ve just made contact with a “Stilldontcee”.

On my last two posts, I tried to get acroos two main ideas.

In the first one was that the Stroller wanted to be seen.

Even though it seems to be a commonly agreed idea, this detail, by which the Stroller could have EASILY avoided ANY contact, is OFTEN OVERLOOKED when questioning facts that occur afterwards.

I seemed not to have made myself as clear about the second one. It seems to some “resistance” in the fact stated by me that the Stroller stopped, and stopped for a significant time, as per following comments from the 3A Forum:

KamikazeKoala
Post subject: Re: Three Little Words, Ten Huge Facts - Textusa
Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 10:51 pm
I am not sure I necessarily agree with this. The Smiths are Irish and in my experience the Irish are friendly towards strangers and tend to be talkative, more so than the English at any rate. Secondly the were leaving a bar. Alcohol makes most people more friendly and outgoing. I think in the circumstances the Smiths could well have addressed a passing stranger even if he didn't stop. I realise though that this does not invalidate the main thread of your argument.

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Whatever
Post subject: Re: Three Little Words, Ten Huge Facts - Textusa Posted:
Wed Apr 14, 2010 1:59 am
A fascinating analysis and I agree with the majority of it, except as Kamikaze says, there are people in the world who'll try and impose themselves on others by making conversational gestures for no reason other than that that is what they want to do - similar to someone saying 'cheer up' as you walk past them completely minding your own business. It's an odd thing to say, though, 'is she asleep?' it would almost make me want to say 'No...she's dead' if caught in the wrong mood. I need to re-read the OP again and very carefully - it's intriguing.

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beachy
Post subject: Re: Three Little Words, Ten Huge Facts - Textusa
Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 5:02 am
I always find Textusa's writings interesting, but I must say that I am not in full agreement with this one. I don't think it necessarily follows that the man carrying the child stopped to talk to the Smiths. He could have merely slowed down for a minute to allow someone else to pass him on the steps or in some other narrow part of the street. There were several of the Smiths, probably some of them walking abreast, and rather than rudely push through them this fellow, whoever he was, may have merely hesitated to allow them to pass as a group. Perhaps the Smiths are merely chatty and friendly. "Is she asleep?" seems to me a rather odd question to ask, because what's the alternative? On the other hand, though, reading the statements made by Martin, Peter, and Aoife Smith in May 2007 does not indicate that any of them expressed to the PJ at that time any concern that the child might have been comatose or dead. I believe that Martin Smith is an honest fellow, and I think it possible that the man he saw was Gerry McCann. But as he cannot be sure of that, neither can I. If he had been able to say in his first statement that he was 80% certain the man he saw was Gerry McCann, then this might be an entirely different case. But that's not where we are.

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As you can see these comments basically contest that the Stroller stopped, much less for a significant amount of time.

This post has sole purpose to clarify this question so that we can proceed with sustainability

The key is to understand the meaning of “significant”.

For a professional sprinter, a tenth of a second is the difference between glory and disaster. One second, for him/her, is a certain passage to oblivion.

Ask any woman who has given birth, the significance of a minute, or a prisoner what a day means to him.

Time is as significant as it’s relevant to each one.

In this case, the fact of just slowing down in the presence of strangers when holding an abducted child is, for me, to stop significantly.

To just slow down in the presence of strangers, holding an abducted child, when you could have avoided the strangers altogether, is to stop for an eternity.

He stopped for an eternity, and then some, when he walked towards the youngsters.

This is important to be clarified so that the second main idea becomes also clear: that the Stroller had a direct contact with the Smith family, in proximity and terms that allowed him to become fully cognizant that the Smiths were Irish.

This is reinforced by the expression “the Smiths are Irish and in my experience the Irish are friendly towards strangers and tend to be talkative, more so than the English at any rate” from one of the above comments.

It wasn't only the three words that gave their accent away, but the various verbal exchanges between themselves.

Personal name calling for one, come to mind as a way to identify the nationality of a group of people, especially if they are outspoken and extroverted as the Irish are known to be.

In the next post, which I’m already writing, I intend to explain a Doctor’s strange apparent allergy to certain areas of town, and how this very peculiar and localized disease increases the interest, even further, of the Smith’s sighting.