Time passes faster in the mornings than it does in the afternoons. An 8 hour shift beginning at 6 is brought to its end more quickly than one beginning at 9.

Reasons for why this is the case are too numerous for me to completely list here, and come from a wide array of specializations including philosophy, psychology, neurology, botany, and cultural studies. One reason, put forth by the linguistic community, is this: in the alphabet, the ‘A’ of AM precedes the ‘P’ of PM and, in the minds of the masses, there exists a correlation between cumming first and being faster; they are something like cousins. Further, when enough people make the same assumption, it becomes the truth.

It’s a complicated matter: while always faster, the degree to which AM time passes more quickly than PM time is not a dependable constant and cannot be counted on. The military, desperate to force time into a predictable nature, created a system absent of letters. The initial result of this strategy was the result hoped for: seeing only numbers, the linguists reluctantly withdrew their passage-of-time justification and bowed out of the scene. No sooner had they left, however, than the military’s cheers and jubilance was immediately subdued by the arrival of the mathematicians, who pointed out that the smaller numerals precede the larger ones on the real-number line.

Time’s faster morning-hour passage was preserved. Guns and artillery proved no match against these wicked instruments: