3/363

It’s January 3rd already, and I haven’t even written a 2008 post yet! I used to have a calendar at work that had little numbers in the corner of each day’s square – first, the number of days in the year that had gone by, and second, how many were still to come. It started out with 1/364, then 2/363, and so on. Sometime around July it all evened out, and then the balance tipped in the other direction, until it ended with 364/1. And I was always surprised by how quickly those numbers changed direction…

Rick and I were talking about that the other day – about how time seems to move so much more quickly NOW than it seemed to move when we were kids. And obviously, in actuality, it has stayed exactly the same. At least I’m fairly certain there were 24 hours in a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year when I was a kid. But all those hours and days seemed to move so much more sloooooowly. I have a theory as to why that is – when you’re a kid, you’re always WAITING for things you’re really looking forward to. You’re waiting to go to school like your older siblings… and then once you’re there, you’re waiting for summer vacation to arrive… you’re waiting to be “this tall” to go on the fun rides at the amusement park… you’re waiting for Christmas or your birthday to arrive so you can have some new toys… you’re waiting to move on to junior high and high school… you’re waiting until you can get into a PG-13 movie without your parents… it’s all about waiting “until you’re older,” which, when you’re young, never seems to happen quickly enough.

But then you finally reach elusive adulthood, and it turns out to be much less rosy and fantastic than you envisioned it must be. Way back when you were still waiting to get on the fun rides at the amusement park, it seemed so UNFAIR to be small and held captive under the adult dictatorship. How much better it would be when YOU were in charge of your OWN life! And then, strangely, when the time comes to be in charge of your own life, things start fast-forwarding. Suddenly, there are all sorts of things to NOT look forward to – work deadlines, and endless piles of bills, and driving responsibly, and shopping for groceries, and perplexing weight gain, and unruly children (who are, no doubt, waiting for the moment they can break free of your grasp), and problems and illness and questions and debt… and everything flies by like a rolling snowball gaining speed down a mountain…

Whereas there used to seem like TOO much time stood between you and those milestones you were dreaming about, now it seems there is never ENOUGH time. Time hasn’t really changed… just the perception of time. But there’s good news this year – I just noticed, as I finally tacked my new 2008 calendar to the wall, that this is a leap year. That means we get an entire extra 24 hours! So 2008, no matter how imperceptibly, WILL be longer than 2007 was.

What should I do with all that extra time? Oh, I know – I think I’ll spend a day at an amusement park riding roller coasters… and I’ll tell all the little kids to enjoy those long, seemingly endless years while they have the chance…