4 . What is time? Is it a thing to be saved or spent or wasted, like money? Or is it something we have no ______ over, like the weather? Is time the same all over the world? That’s an easy question, you say. Wherever you go, a minute is 60 seconds, an hour is 60 minutes, a day is 24 hours, and so forth. Well, maybe. But in America, time is more than that. Americans see time as a ______ resource. Maybe that’s why they are fond of the expression, “Time is money.”

Because Americans believe time is a limited resource, they try to conserve and manage it. People in the U.S. often attend lectures or read books on time ______ . It seems they all want to ______ their time better. Professionals carry around pocket planners—some in electronic form to keep ______ of appointments and deadlines. People do all they can to ______ more life out of their time. The early American hero Benjamin Franklin expressed this view best: “Do you love life? Then do not waste time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

To Americans, punctuality is a way of showing ______ for other people’s time. Being more than 10 minutes late to an appointment usually calls for an apology, and maybe an explanation. People who are running late often call ahead to let others know of the ______. Of course, the less formal the situation, the less important it is to be ______ on time.

American lifestyles show how much people respect the time of others. When people plan an event, they often set the time days or weeks ______. If people want to come to your house for a friendly visit, they will usually call first to make sure it is ______. Also, people ______ to call others late at night for fear they might be in bed. The time may ______, but most folks think twice about calling after 10:00 p.m.

Even Americans would admit that no one can master time. Time—like money—______ all too easily through our fingers. And time—like the weather— is very hard to ______. Nevertheless, time is one of life’s most precious gifts. And unwrapping it is half the fun.

9 . “It’s a windy day in Laguna San Ignacio, and the waves seem to come from all directions,” said Sara Clemence in Bloomberg Businessweek. My children and I are riding on an 18-foot boat — small enough that we can reach down into the water if a gray whale swims up alongside. And then we see what we’ve come for: a heart-shaped shower of water and a dark mass rushing below it. As instructed, we splash (溅泼) the water strongly to signal the huge whale, which turns out to be a mother with her weeks-old baby. The baby soon swims beneath our boat, emerges to blow mist in my face, then “lies onto its side like a 2-ton puppy.” Leaning down, I touched its skin gently. “It feels electric. Also, a bit like petting a hard-boiled egg.”

San Ignacio is one of very few places where a person can pet a whale. The whales come each year to the coast of Baja California to give birth and to mate. If you’re lucky, you can “shake hands with a leathery fin (鳍)” or even “plant a kiss on a cold, salty cheek.” I usually worry about such interactions, because wild creatures can become deeply stressed by human contact. But boat numbers are strictly limited in these protected waters. And any whale that approaches a boat does so on its own terms. Like that baby whale: “We see him a few times, and he seems to like being petted and splashed.”

So we are two species, connecting through touch, but also through eye contact: “More than once, after nosing around our boat, a young gray whale turns on its side so one dark, baseball-size eye is looking up at us.” Whalers used to call gray whales “devil fish” because these magnificent creatures turn violent when threatened — “or, say, when their babies are harmed.” That makes it feel even more of a blessing when, on our third day there, a large mama whale approaches the boat. “I’m splashing when I feel her nose press up into my hand.” Though she’s “wiser and apparently more alert” than her child, “she still decides to trust us.”