... Time seemed to slow down...
I had read many times, about that felling.
But I did not really know what that means (or even believed it ..) until
I once experienced this feeling myself.
During a seminar (understand "fun week-end") in Spain with most of the employees of our small company, we had the pleasure to visit a farm, rising fighting bulls ( for the arena). And we were given a demonstration, not with a bull but a calf ...
three or four co-workers went into the arena, along with a bullfighter and made a few passes, waving a red "muleta" in front of the animal.
One of our big bosses (I guess it was to show the upper management also could be courageous...) decided to have a go at the "muleta".
I was safely standing behind a wall, just on the side of the arena, taking pictures.
I immediately saw the guy was not at ease : he was slow to move, did not do what the bullfighter told him (i.e. he hold the muleta in front of him, instead of on the side) etc..
And sure enough, the calf went straight on, pushed him down and procedeed to trample him and to stab him with its horns.
I was looking at all this and was petrified behind my low wall, just thinking "but someone has to help him ...." and after what seemed a long time the bullfighter and other farm's hands went into the arena.
At that time I thought nobody had reacted before at least a full minute or more.
A co-worker recorded the incident with his video camera.
When I looked at the video, I mesured the time between the moment our boss went down and the moment the bullfighter was diverting the calf :much less than 10 seconds !
I still wonder at my sense of passing time at the moment : "my" time was about 10 times slower than reality ... <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
P.S.: our boss was quite seriously injured, a horn having driven into his skull (just a bit ; not enough to prevent him to still be our boss.... h?las <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />.....)