COLUMBUS, Ohio — Dale Prewitt, 47, who told his family on a Saturday in the spring of 2016 that he would “be ready in five minutes,” confirmed Tuesday that the five minutes are “wrapping up” and that the end is “genuinely in sight.”

“I just have to find my other shoe, and then I’m basically out the door,” said Prewitt, speaking from the upstairs bathroom, where he has been “just finishing one thing” since approximately the second Obama administration’s memory had faded from public view. “Five minutes. Tops.”

His family, who have waited in the front hallway through two presidential administrations, one pandemic, and the entire run of a streaming series that has since been cancelled, said they have stopped treating the estimate as casual speech and now regard it as a binding international timeline.

“He said five minutes, and we respect the process,” said his wife, Marcy Prewitt, 46, who has been wearing the same coat since 2016. “You don’t walk out on a five-minute commitment. That’s how you end up with a six-minute commitment.”

The couple’s children, now 17 and 14, have never known a world without the countdown. Their eldest, Tyler, said he has spent so long standing by the door that he has “started to see it as a kind of career.”

In 2019, the family converted the front hallway into the Prewitt Museum of Imminent Departure, a small exhibit documenting the wait. Admission is free, though donations of snacks are encouraged. Highlights include the original car keys, a single loafer under glass labeled “The Wrong Shoe, 2018,” and a laminated timeline marking each time Prewitt has shouted “Coming!” from an undisclosed location.

“The ‘Coming!’ wall is our most visited display,” said Dr. Ingrid Valdemarsson-Cho, senior curator of Domestic Delay Studies at the Midwestern Institute for the Preservation of Almost Being Ready. “Visitors are moved by the sheer consistency. Mr. Prewitt has never once said ‘ten minutes,’ which would have been a different and much more honest kind of failure.”

Valdemarsson-Cho said the case is being closely watched by scholars of what she called “the elastic five,” a phenomenon in which a stated duration becomes legally and emotionally unmoored from the passage of time. She noted that Prewitt’s window has already outlasted the warranty on the family’s minivan, which is still parked in the driveway with the engine running.

“We’re not angry. We’re just going to be here when he’s ready, because there’s no other plan.”

Neighbors have grown used to the arrangement. Local mail carrier Gary Osterhaus said he has delivered more than 2,300 packages to the Prewitt home and has twice been asked to “hang on a sec” by the family as a courtesy.

Asked whether he understood why his family might be frustrated, Prewitt said he was “honestly a little hurt,” noting that he has “made real progress” and that he has “already got my phone and wallet,” which he described as “the hard part.” He added that he only needs to “check one thing real quick” on his phone, which the family says is how the 2021 delay began.

At press time, Prewitt had reportedly located the second shoe, realized it was not the correct second shoe, and announced to the hallway that he would be down “in five.”