✤.J.
It seems excessive to you because you weren't the one locked in a room for 7 minutes. In the grand scheme of things, 7 minutes is a very tiny amount of time. To a kid, without a watch, trapped in a small space, it could be an absolute eternity.
I'll put it this way: Remember labor pains? They're only 1.5 minutes long (give or take) but it sure felt like longer, didn't it? And you were an adult with acess to a clock.