I had to look twice at the calendar before writing this column, because it didn’t seem possible to me that we’re already at the end of July. How did this happen and where was I when it did?
Now that I’m old as dirt, it seems like time is whizzing past so quickly I don’t even have time to get my breakfast Pop Tart out of the toaster before it’s time for bed again.
I’m assuming this is something that happens in your golden years, because I remember time slower than ketchup out of a bottle when I was a girl waiting for Christmas. Or summer vacation.
Remember those last few weeks of school before the summer break, when it was all downhill from there and no one had any interest in doing anything actually education-related?
Including the teachers, who just wanted to get those damn kids out of their classrooms so they could clean them out for the summer and get on the plane to Bermuda.
OK, calm down, don’t write me any nasty emails. I only say this about the school teachers who are my personal friends, so obviously shady characters. If you’re a teacher, I’m sure you hold yourself to much higher standards than anyone who would voluntarily hang around with me.
My highly scientific theory about this time issue is that it speeds up as we get older because we have so many more days behind us, so each individual day before us seems shorter and shorter. I’m sure this is what Albert Einstein meant in his theory of relativity, despite the fact that I never studied physics and got a D in geometry. I only remember that it involved something regarding time being relative, right?
Hopefully, he wasn’t thinking of any of my relatives, because they are all crazy as loons and that fact is never going to change.
I still remember a member of my family informing me he was going to ask his second wife for a divorce, because it would be advantageous for his upcoming income tax situation. I pointed out that this was a lunatic decision and he would regret it, but he ignored me, which is what most members of my family do whenever I point out that they’re being insane.
I once had a therapist explain to me that crazy families tend to have one member designated as the “sane one,” and therefore in charge of anything that involves, well, sanity. This made perfect sense to me because it explained my entire life since I was old enough to hold a sippy cup.
At the time, I was going through sheer misery because my mother and my first sister-in-law were feuding, which wasn’t unusual. What made me miserable is that they always stopped talking to each other, and only communicated through me.
“You tell that woman that she bla bla bla bla,” one of them would call and order me. And, as the designated sane family member, I would do it, also trying to find a way to heal the breach between them. “Oh, no, I’m not going to listen to that garbage,” the other person would retort, and so forth.
So I’d end up frustrated and sad, because I had failed at my job and I was still in the middle of a fight that didn’t actually even involve me. This happened frequently and it seemed perfectly normal to me. Looking back, this is probably why I was irresistibly drawn to any man at a party wearing a kimono and a beret.
Then, one day, my shrink asked me a question. “Are either of these women mentally defective?”
“No,” I said. “They are of reasonably normal intelligence.”
“Are they all adults?” she continued.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, then, why do you have to solve their problems? Why can’t you just tell them to talk to each other and hang up the phone?”
This had honestly never occurred to me. Quit my family job? But the idea started to grow on me, and one day I just did it. I couldn’t believe what a relief it was to no longer be an unpaid mediator for the family. Of course they were all furious and didn’t talk to me for awhile, but that was peaceful too.
You may wonder what all this has to do with my original premise about time moving forward so swiftly and to be honest I have absolutely no idea. Except maybe that I remember this so clearly even though it was decades ago, and I can’t even remember whether I brushed my teeth this morning.
I do feel I’ve acquired some measure of wisdom in the 70 years I’ve now been alive, if I can remember any of it. Although my kids don’t seem to think so. Just because they can tell me how to fix my phone, they assume that this also means they know more than I do about life. Wrong. But I guess they just have to make youthful mistakes like I did.
Meanwhile, can you tell me what I did earlier in the summer? Because it all seems to now be a blur.
Want to contact me? I’m at mfisher@scng.com. I especially like it when you send me diet tips or tell me what I’ve done wrong.