TIME

Sometimes it really feels as if I am living in a time warp … you know, like some sort of weird worm hole has opened up and swallowed my time and left me with only the bits and pieces that weren’t prime. Father Time has a voracious appetite, but is at the same time a picky eater.

Each day I take one step forward and four steps back and realize that time was off doing other things while I was looking for the last place I saw my glasses. All the kerfuffle of daily living slides along the slick surface of time, and crashes into the end of my day. I seem to be running really hard and getting exactly nowhere.

But then I got to thinking about it … that totally makes sense. After all, as the earth rotates and time zones go forward, don’t we by default travel backwards. I mean … just to stay where we are don’t we need to step lively?  Maybe when I was younger it took less effort to keep up, but time appears to have put on some weight while I wasn’t looking, and now it takes a lot more effort to kick it all forward.  I guess it isn’t all that surprising that we feel the tug of time slipping away if we stand still for any amount of time. But some days it feels as if time pulled the rug out from under me just for the hell of it.

By now I am okay with merely keeping up, staying even, and not really making any progress against the passage of time. It is part of the reality that comes with aging. I mean, I know that gravity is now in control of all my body parts, and the effort needed to reconstruct myself so as to leave the house decently clad,  grows exponentially. I am resigned to the fact that I am unable to keep pace with all that I need to do, and that my good intentions are being shipped overnight express to yet another new day. I have adjusted to the need to keep lists and always put the keys in the same place. So along with all the rest of it, I am aware that I am balanced precariously on the edge of the time as it moves ahead.

However, recently I asked myself what happens when a traveler crosses the international dateline and is pitched off the edge of today?  Well, as it turns out … Nothing happens. They just pick up 24 hours or lose 24 hours, and essentially go about their business with no aging or loss of life. Time just folds in on itself and the world continues to revolve. Nobody gets any older, and no deterioration of cellular structure occurs. Nobody gets a day older or a day younger, and the fish that live on the international date line continue to swim and go about their fishy business. Time just takes a break and picks up again on the other side.

So, why not approach this whole backward and retro-degrading tug of war with time in the same way. I will just drop out for 24 hours, and see you all tomorrow. Right? And if it works, I could plan on one day a week to zone out, as it were. It sounds like a perfect plan to get through February … which by the way has its own issues with time warpage … what happens to that extra day, hmmm? Does it just hang out for three years carrying a grudge and waiting to blindside you? And is the effect of the extra day to stretch time or to compress it because all those other years are short a day?  Anyway, there is a reason February is a short month … it is shorter than all the others because each day is longer than any others because of that weird extra day. So, my plan should totally work … do the time zone zone-out thing, and shorten the month by a few days. What could it hurt?

An adult snow-day of your own choosing … what could be more enjoyable?

Take that Old Father Time!