August 14, 2013 Article

The Old Coot is lost in time.

By Merlin Lessler

This “time” thing we live with is perplexing. The older you get, the faster it passes by. You begin to notice it when you hit your thirties; by the time you hit your fifties it’s really out of hand. Every reference you make to time is off! “We bought the dog three years ago,” you might say – and then figure out it was nearly five. That haircut you swear you got last week was really three weeks ago. No, your fingernails aren’t growing faster; you didn’t just clip them a few days ago, it was two weeks ago. This is how the time thing ramps up. And, makes you acutely aware that your perception of how fast it passes is out of kilter.

High school reunions emphasize the point. Almost everyone seems the same at your tenth reunion. Except they now have enough money to put more than a gallon of gas in their gas tanks and the urge to peal out has vanished (since they are the ones paying for the tires). All is well; ten years went fast but not enough to scare you.

Then it’s time for the 25^th reunion. It’s a shocker! Twenty-five years? The gathering has an edge to it now. There is a poster at the sign-in table, listing the classmates that have passed on. It’s brought up again when the class president addresses the group. You notice that he isn’t as suave as he used to be. And, bald too! “What’s happening, you wonder?” Some of these people have really aged. You skip the 30^th. “I just went to my 25^th,” you explain to your spouse as you toss the invitation into the trashcan. Nobody bothers to set up a 40^th. It’s just an awkward number of years to celebrate.

But, then it comes. Your 50^th! Now, you’re in a dilemma. “Do I want to hang out for an evening with old people I won’t even recognize?” But, you go; you have to. This may be the last time you ever see them. (Or, they ever see you.) And, you were right; when you walk in, it’s to a roomful of strange faces.

The speed of how fast time flies hits home hard when you are with little kids. They’re all excited at Thanksgiving because Christmas is next. “It will be here in four weeks!” you tell them. “Four weeks grandpa, that’s forever!” To you, it’s too fast to get ready for it. For them, it’s an eternity. Why the difference, you wonder? Then, you do the math. For a 5-year old, 4 weeks is 1/60th of their life, but for an old coot like me, it’s a mere fraction of that, more like 1/1327 of a lifetime. Their four-week “eternity” is hardly more than a day to an old coos. It all depends on your reference point.

But knowing why time seems to fly doesn’t help. Not when your only interest is to get it to slow down. There’s only one way to do that. Don’t get old!