“The other day” is one of those phrases everyone uses and no one’s ever defined. To some people, it means yesterday. To others, it covers most of the Obama years.
And people actually have strong opinions about this. In an r/AskUK discussion, one person insisted a week was the absolute limit, arguing that “two months ago is not the other day; that is just poor calendar management.” Another figured it could mean anything from yesterday to sometime in the last decade.
One commenter said their dad uses it for events that happened “anywhere between last Tuesday and 1994.” Which feels very “dad.”
The Internet Can’t Agree on What ‘The Other Day’ Means
Dr. Luke Jones, who studies how people perceive time at the University of Manchester, told Metro that we’re “not very good at remembering exactly when things happened.” Especially the boring stuff. Most of us can barely remember what we had for lunch a few days ago, let alone when we last went grocery shopping or made a phone call. That’s where “the other day” comes in.
There’s also a psychological explanation for why something from years ago can feel surprisingly recent. It’s called the telescoping effect, and it describes how we misremember when events happened. Older memories can seem much closer than they are, explaining how someone can swear they went to a certain restaurant “the other day” only to discover it closed in 2019.
The opposite can happen with recent memories, too. Human beings are extremely unreliable at remembering dates, which has caused headaches for researchers trying to figure out when people last visited a doctor or bought something.
Age might also have something to do with the increasingly generous definition of “recent.” People commonly report that time seems to pass quicker as they get older, so a few years can feel like a much shorter stretch. Which could explain why your dad still talks about a vacation from 1994 like everyone should remember what happened.
Most of the time, an exact date isn’t necessary anyway. If you’re telling a friend about something weird that happened at the grocery store, “the other day” gets the point across just fine. But when the timing actually matters, therapist Rebecca Mackillop told Metro that asking a follow-up question is a better approach than assuming everyone uses the phrase the same way.
And if someone’s story involves a Blockbuster membership, you have every right to question their view of time.
The post People Are Arguing Over What ‘The Other Day’ Means, and Nobody Can Agree appeared first on VICE.
