“Forever” Comes Quicker Than You Think

           They had an earthquake down south of us. A fairly prestigious and highly learned group, I believe it was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, announced that the seismic waves that rocked Chile were so huge as to cause our normal 24 hour day to be shortened. Time, as they put it, had speeded up. I didn’t bother to read past the second paragraph. Anybody over 40 doesn’t need an exhaustive report or a Richter scale to know the days now are flying by.

           It wasn’t always so.

           I can remember lying in that field in front of B. P. Moore’s house and watching the clouds change shapes when time didn’t move at all. We’d do that as long as elephants, upside down tomahawks or eagle heads with sharp beaks and one big eye floated by. When they began to form ears and noses and take on a human-like shape we rolled over and started searching for four leaf clovers. Didn’t nobody want to look up and see Leon or Mary E. Pendleton starring down at you from outer space!

           Folks, you can’t imagine how long a day was back in 1954! They crawled along like molasses poured over the Hubbard glacier up in the land of the midnight sun. It was an eternity from daylight until Ricky, Eddie, Robert Earl and some more of us would meet-up at the ball yard. Saturday afternoon matinees took forever to “get here”. I spent three weeks one afternoon in a spelling class in the second grade. And if LaRenda Bradfield hadn’t a’given me a little help, we might all still be there!

           Life was in slow motion.

           It was like that old clock in Miss Belle’s class. We could do math, read about Dick and Jane, make a Valentine heart for every student in the world, dust the erasers……and the long black hand on that giant General Electric timepiece hanging high behind her desk wouldn’t have moved one nanosecond! The only time that clock worked at all was during recess and lunch. We prayed for 3:15 but God didn’t hear us.

           Me and Buddy, Pam, Ruth Ann, Yogi, Brenda…..all of us were living a super charged, got to get going, don’t dare miss a thing, wide-eyed, bring it on life…..but we were stuck in first gear! As we grew into the back booth out at Frank’s Dairy Bar time ground down to an excruciating slow pace….and then stopped altogether!

           “It’s like the whole town is in some kind of dormant state.”

           “Friday night will never get here.”

           “Ricky, if you get one more of my fries without asking, I’m going to break every bone in your body one at a time!”

           “Ya’ll want to ride up and circle the square?”

           “I can’t wait to graduate and escape this place.”

           “We won’t make it, we’re going to be right here forever!”

           It was always the same. Always….

           Well, wait a minute, that afternoon I ran into Mary Hadley up at John Motheral’s Drugstore went pretty fast. We shared a Cherry Coke and a few laughs. And our hands brushed once as we both reached for the drink. I think Mr. John had that same clock that Miss Belle used for recess.

           To the surprise of the whole group, graduation day snuck up on us. And most of us did, indeed, “escape”. We took off like the wind without a backward glance.

           I’m not sure exactly when time begin to speed up a tad. It might have been after one of those California quakes. I noticed it with my first child. He was a baby. Then one day he was catching a pass in a football game up in Blountstown. Then he was gone. Cathy and I sat in his bedroom without speaking. We understood he had to go. College, and life, was calling. He had his own worlds to conquer. Maybe he felt he’d waited long enough. We couldn’t get him back.

           Time had jumped out from under us.

           We turned to tell Jess let’s enjoy….. it was too late. He hit one off the left center field fence in that old park in Panama City and he was gone.

           Where was this rapid fire stuff when we were sitting in Miss Carolyn’s class, cutting out those presidents’ heads! Why didn’t time move like this when we were hanging around the Park Theatre waiting for “Giant” to come on? Where was this time whirlwind when Brother Hatcher was preaching?

           Remember just a while back when the whole world was in the Y2K uproar. All the computers were going to crash. We weren’t ready for a new century. Woe unto us…..the end is near. Folks, that was TEN years ago!

           My head is reeling. I shower and shave on Tuesday but before I can get my shoes on it’s Friday afternoon! I’m interrupted in the middle of taking down the Christmas decorations by the Easter bunny knocking on the front door! I went to sleep with Ronald Reagan overhauling the Berlin wall; I wake up and we’ve got troops fighting in Afghanistan!

           We don’t need an official NASA report stating the obvious!

           Life can be a hoot. We spend the first part of it trying to speed it up and get somewhere…..only to find the last part going so fast we can’t take a deep breath and soak it all in. Seems like we live it backwards!

           What I wouldn’t give for ten minutes back in Mr. B. P. Moore’s field. When it came my time to read, I would help Dick and Jane find Spot. I’d be proud to sit on a park bench up on the square and watch Mr. McIver and the other men play checkers. I’d tell the guys at Frank’s we weren’t “marking” time, we were “making” it.

I’d’a walked Mary Hadley home……

                 Respectfully,

                     Kes