Breaking a law of nature

There are several laws governing our natural world. There are the laws of motion, the law of gravity, the law of conservation of energy, Mother's Law of Washing the Hands Before Eating, etc. And then there is the Netflix Law, which says that the person who most strenuously argues FOR watching a particular movie will be the first person to fall asleep while watching that movie. Within the first ten minutes.

Some laws have corollaries, too. The corollary to this law is that the person who did not particularly want to watch the movie in the first place will be unable, no matter how awful the movie is, to fall asleep during it.

Let's look at an example of this law and its corollary. Few people know that Netflix can attribute its enormous success almost solely to Joe, who, as a bachelor, watched an unprecedented number of movies and documentaries. He saw no reason for this to abate once we were married, and the little red envelopes continued to arrive daily.

He was particularly eager to see a documentary about Einstein, admiring the man's great brain for math and science. My tastes run more to Pride and Prejudice ("Make haste, Jane! Make haste!"). But I generously agreed to watch Einstein, and when Joe promptly fell asleep -- somewhere around Minute 8 -- I continued to watch Einstein, mainly because at that point I was not on familiar terms with the remote control, and anyway we did not have a copy of Pride and Prejudice lying around.

Joe woke up while the movie was still in progress, and immediately wanted to know what he had missed.

"I can't believe it!" I said. "This is terrible! Einstein was married to this brilliant woman, but then he fell in love with his own cousin, and he divorced the brilliant woman to marry her, but he kind of liked the cousin's daughter for a while, and then he went after his friend's niece, and --"

Amid this rush of torrid details Joe said desperately, "But did they say anything about math?"

The rush of torrid details was replaced by a blank stare. "Math...?"

"Yeah. Einstein. Math. His discoveries."

"Well..." I said, "I suppose they might have.... I didn't really catch that part. But he wrote all these love letters to all these women...!"

Inadvertently, we had discovered a way to circumvent the law of falling asleep during movies. Joe now knows that if he wants to find out anything of consequence, he will have to stay awake himself. And we have Einstein to thank for it all.