THEN: Changing the Time
NOW : Changing the Time
With the end of Daylight Savings, I’ve been thinking a lot about Time. That elusive concept that always seems to pass too slowly when you’re young and way too fast once you’ve crossed the half century mark of your life
I mean, really. One minute you’re walking down the aisle in a cap and gown and the next you’re wearing a backless gown and being wheeled down the corridor for a colonoscopy.
So, I’ve been thinking. What if instead of simply turning the clocks back an hour in March and then gaining that hour in October, we could actually save time itself?
If all those hours of Daylight Savings were actually saved in Personal Time Bank accounts.
Every Daylight Savings we would add another hour, not be used until we turned forty or of an age when we could really appreciate time. Our hours would accumulate and then each fall when we turn the clocks back, we could go to our time bank and withdraw whichever hour we wanted.
Think about it. You could withdraw an hour from a day in high school when you followed your crush around, waiting for him to smile at you. To remind yourself of how young love felt. To help you relate to that hormonal teenage daughter sulking at you from across the kitchen table who wants only to send a text to her boyfriend and not have to listen to you bitch about her lack of respect.
You could withdraw an hour from the day your child was born and relive how it felt to cradle her in your arms. Before she learned how to talk back.
But remember, take this herb for a short duration, because, it get viagra prescription may invite trouble sleeping or insomnia. However, sildenafil delivery if they can control their blood pressure within control, it will not cause threatening to the fetus. You need to get in touch with a help care provider, if you want to use these wonder pills to satisfy yourself and your wife’s sexual lives might be ruled out because of expense and other things seeming more important. http://nichestlouis.com/levitra-4456.html cheap cialis If you are unable to maintain stiffness of the male organ tadalafil 20mg india for complete lovemaking act to satisfy your female in bed with mesmerizing sexual pleasure. Or maybe an hour from when you were laid up in bed with a broken bone. An hour that would remind you to slow down, take a deep breath. You don’t need to be there for everyone, all the time.
If you were sad over something, you could take a “happy” hour from your bank to remind you of life’s ups and downs. Perhaps withdraw an hour to help you through a tough situation. Or even an hour to spend with someone who is no longer with you.
You could revisit the days when we called each other to say hello instead of sending emails. When a text usually meant a book, a virus referred to something attacking our bodies, and a window was a large opening looking out onto the world.
And let’s take it one step further. How about being able to withdraw against these hours whenever you needed a few extra minutes to meet a deadline? Instead of rushing from the market to the soccer game to the doctor’s to the office, you could borrow from your Time Bank and make that tightly squeezed day, just a bit easier.
Or maybe even trade hours with your friend to see how it really feels to walk in someone else’s shoes. Oh, how we could learn to stop judging and just accept each other.
Best of all, we could loan hours to someone whose life is being cut too short.
Oh, the possibilities are limitless.
If only this were possible. But, it’s not. So, I’m going to use this hour for some “me” time.
How about you?
Actually…a not a very well-kept secret is that time really IS bendable, something the CIA knows all about and had a program that depended on it in the 80s and 90s.
Ok, Carol. You have totally peaked my interest. Tell me more!
I love your concept! I know teachers and maybe in other companies you can donate your vacation days to some one who is ill and exhausting theirs. It is like giving time to someone in need.
What a fabulous thing! I didn’t know this was done anywhere. But I love it.
You are so correct! I would love to have another hour to hold my babies. Now they’re holding babies of their own.
It’s crazy isn’t it? How fast the time goes by. My littlest grandchild is already three!
So many wonderful truths in this one Janie. My favorite of which is loaning banked hours to a loved one whose time was cut short, if only…
I would do that, too. If only..
I was smiling the whole time I was reading your post. Let me know when you find a way to actually accomplish this. I would love it, especially having an hour, an entire hour, with someone who is no longer here.
I have been told that bending time is possible. So who knows? Maybe not in our lifetime, but then our descendents could use their hour to visit with us.
What a beautiful idea – although I tend to sleep very happily through those extra hours!
Me, too. I did wake up early, but now it’s not even nine yet and I’m exhausted.
I love the idea of the time bank and the idea of giving time to someone who might need it…. Even though it is totally unrealistic, it is a beautifully hopeful thought.
I know. It’s unrealistic, but what if…what if..
Love this idea, Janie! Absolutely brilliant.
Thanks, Linda. I’ve thought of turning it into a short story. Some day. I just need more time!
I love this idea, if only we could actually do this. I would love to hold my daughter as a baby in my arms, yack with high school friends and listen to Dark Side of the Moon for the first time, oh so many things….
Me, too. I would go back to holding my daughter the night she was born. It was one of the best days of my life.
Love this, Janie. Leave it to you to come up with some brilliance.
PS I hate the backless gowns and I’m up for my 2nd colonoscopy in January. Fun times ahead!