Time

When I was a teenager I decided that I was going to rebel against time.  I did not wear a watch.  That was my entire rebellion. 

Actually it went further than that; I decided that since time was a man made invention that I didn’t want to be a part of it any longer.  Time, dates, weeks, months, the entire year I wanted to wage a sit in and be done with it.  I believed that no one should tell us “When”.  Dang you Eudoxus and Julius Caesar!

(Disclaimer – this is about the concept of time, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years.  Not theological or philosophical) 

Unfortunately I was still in high school, and I still had appointments to keep as many teenagers do who have extracurricular activities.  So my rebellion of time was merely by mouth and not action as I still had to be at school on time, in class on time, at my music and club appointments, church and at my part time job.  And I had a mother who was the most annoying yet persistent alarm clock in the entire world. 

For part of this rebellion I was at the mercy of my parents, mainly my Mom, who would cart me to and from aforementioned places.  Then I turned 16 and got my driver’s licenses.  I thought “Surely my rebellion could come to fruition!” (I don’t remember if I actually used the word “fruition.”)

It, however, did not.  Shockingly.      

I still had to be everywhere on time just like I had to be before.  Adults do not care about the whims of a teenager’s rebellion against time, nor do their part time jobs.

Clearly my rebellion was futile.  I did not convert any followers and I did not do anything but not wear a watch.  It was more inconvenient than rebellious. 

Most people just smiled and nodded and thought strange things about me.   I think they still do.

I still do not wear a watch, even though I have approximately five of them.  I don’t need to wear a watch now, as we are all surrounded by time.  Right now as I type this at the bottom right hand corner of this screen is the time 2:39 p.m.  My cell phone tells me the time, even the date.  It’s on the radio, the television, flashing LED signs as I drive down the street.  My voice mail even tells me what time it was when someone left me a message, so does the texts.  We cannot go anywhere in modern western civilization and not know what time it is, or what date it is for that matter.  Yet we cannot control it, even though we created it. 

You’d think that something that we created we could manipulate.  Alas, we cannot.  Where is Dr. Emmett Brown or Marty when you need them?

I believe that we should be able to manipulate time, stupid physics.  Just like I believe that I should, in theory, be able to rip a telephone book in half, it’s man made why not?

(For those of you younger readers, a telephone book is a large catalog type book with very thin pages listing businesses phone numbers and addresses, as well as residents.  It comes in yellow or white depending on the use.  On a further note, a Book is a tangible substance that you hold in your hands with many paper inserts with words written on them in the form of a story and it is bound in a harder type of paper to keep the inserts safe, some are even bound in leather.  Amazing I know. They were invented by the dinosaurs.)  I cannot rip a telephone book in half.  I’d like to think that I should be able to because it is something that man created.  It is not smarter than me, its paper after all and in separate parts it is fragile and weak.  Combined however it might as well be made of steel.  And that frustrates me. 

But I also believe that I when I was a child I could hover.

Clearly the smiles and nods and thoughts of strangeness might be warranted. 

Since we (I) cannot manipulate time, or phone books, we are stuck with what we have.  We march forward through it and it doesn’t care about us and it certainly isn’t kind to us. 

Because now as an adult at the ripe ole’ age of 38 I never have enough time.  It slips through my fingers like water.  I have a theory that we wish our time away.  Monday morning we wish the weekend had been longer and we would have had more time to do what we wanted/needed to do, Tuesday through Thursday we are just wishing to get home to spend time with our children, spouses, prop our feet up, veg on the couch and for it to be the weekend soon, and Friday night we are wanting time to stand still.  Saturday and Sunday is a blur, a flurry of activity all crammed into two days and Sunday night we are wondering where it all went.  And we are left standing there asking ourselves…what happened on Wednesday?  

I do not rebel against time any longer.  I hate that it is passing so quickly, but I can’t stop it, so I accept it and move forward on the wave with it, that and I can’t get my flux capacitor to reach 1.21 gigawatts. 

M.L.