Tick-Talk
Time's up ...
Time out ...
Time's on my side ...
Time and time again ...
Time traveller ...
I'm running out of time ...
Every year, around this time, we turn our clocks back here in most of North America. So, at 2:00 a.m. last night, it miraculously became 1:00 a.m. again. I know, because I was up to watch this little miracle take place.
Hey, you gain an hour of time ... free time to add to your lifespan. And after 60 some odd years, I've gained over 60 hours of time. Heck, that's like almost three free days of living.
I'm not sure what I've done with all that extra time, but I hope that I made the best of it. After all, as the years wear on, well, time is short, and you have to go into a hurry-up-giddy-up mode, sort of like the way football teams put on the big blitz in the last two minutes of the game. The difference being, of course, that in life, it doesn't matter if the game is tied at the end of regulation time. There is no overtime or extra time to speak of. You just head for the big showers in the sky and hope there's some hot water left. Not too hot, mind you, because that might be a tip-off that you're in that extra-spicy-hot place and talking to some two-horned guy who looks a lot like Al Pacino.
Most of my life, I have always told people not to hurry. "There will be time," I've always said like an idiotic J. Alfred Prufrock. "Time to murder or create ..." An odd choice, I know. Time "for a hundred indecisions and for a hundred visions and revisions." Time to wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Well, there's the problem. Most of us never really know what to do with our time. We waste most of it, and then think, "Arrgh, I wasted so much time on that ..." For example, we go to a bad movie, and leave the theatre wishing we had gone five-pin bowling instead. We go to a fancy restaurant, eat the fricasseed special of the day, and then have to stop at the drugstore on the way home for a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. And as we turn a slightly greener shade of pale, we wonder why we didn't just microwave a Lean Cuisine and enjoy the five mouthfuls of flavour-enhanced chicken and rice while watching a repeat of
The Big Bang Theory on television. We even fall in love with the wrong person, and after months or years of suffering that inexplicable dwindling fire of desire, we finally pull the pin on the break-up grenade and watch everything explode before our very eyes.
Time. Time wasted. Such a drag.
Still ... there is time found. Like today. We get a smattering of free time. Time for the taking.
The trick is to grab hold of it, and do something ... anything ... but something that you feel is worthwhile.
No, no, no, I don't mean going to the Food Bank and sorting the boxes of macaroni from the boxes of Jell-O, and I don't mean going to the soup kitchen and ladling out gobs of mystery-meat stew to homeless guys. I mean doing something perfectly selfish, something just for you.
Lie in the tub for your free hour, drive to the shoreline and yodel into the offshore wind, spend a few bucks on a massage or a make-over at the local salon, walk through the mall and actually buy that special something that you have been denying yourself for years. Eat a pint of ice-cream. Send six extra-large pizzas to that neighbour you hate. Coax your unpaid phone bill through the shredder. Open a can of whoopee. Ah, the possibilities are limited only by the depth of your imagination.
Enjoy some quality time, and forget about the quantity of hours that have been slipping down the drain with the leftover spaghetti sauce for most of your life.
This morning, I'm spending a part of my free hour of time writing this little blurb for you. No thanks required, but you're welcome nevertheless.
To be honest, it's time I enjoy, and I can only hope you enjoy it too. If no one were to read this, I'm not sure that would matter. Your appreciation, while cherished as always, doesn't really affect the way I feel after writing. Imagine a loud burp, if you will. That is pretty much the hallmark of finishing something I started and saying afterwards, "Well, that was fun."
What's that?
Oh, yes, I know that in the spring, you lose that hour of extra time, when the bastards in charge make you change your clocks ahead an hour. On some dismal Sunday, 2:00 a.m. suddenly morphs into 3:00 a.m., and you wake up in the morning wondering what you missed during some wacky game of cosmic
Snakes 'n' Ladders, that sends you plummeting down a slippery snake while losing an hour in the process.
Until that inevitable day of refunding my time-well-spent, however, I'm going to enjoy the extra 60 minutes someone has piled on my plate. You do the same ... make the most of what comes free in life, because sure as hell, you'll be paying the price of wasting time somewhere down the road, when you see a bright light at the end of the hallway and wonder where the time went.
© Copyright, Kennedy James. All rights reserved.
