HUMOR, SORT OF: Baloney! Of course, time does exist. If there is no time, how could you explain the following time-consuming moments of my so-far life:
1. Kicking around in that closed wet, warm and comfy space waiting to be born. Nine months seem like forever, until someone yanks you out into the blinding light.
2. Daydreaming in the classroom waiting for the semester to end and summer vacation to begin. For that time, each minute is an hour, each hour is a day, each day is a year and each year is … I’m too young to count that high.
3. Waiting for the results of final exams, so you can then put on that cap and gown and march down the aisle as a proud high school grad, something you’ve dreamed about for 105,120 hours, counting the times you fell asleep in class.
3. Waiting for 12 weeks of sweaty and exhausting boot camp to end so that you could report for duty as a qualified seaman second class aboard a real ship, hoping they’d hold up the war long enough for you to get into it and earn some battle stars.
4. After 912 days of boring, frustrating, wonderful and terrifying experiences, waiting for the war to end so you could sail back home again.
5. Enjoying four years of campus life, mostly partying, mixed with some classroom effort, hoping it would never end. Mine did end with a letter from the US Navy. What, again?
6. After being recalled to active duty for another war, waiting another tedious, fearful and grinding 730 days until you can return home again. This time for good, damn it!
7. Hours and days waiting in outer offices for officious bosses to decide whether to hire you or not. Mostly not. Too qualified. Not qualified enough. Too short. Too tall. Then more hours composing resumes that are just slightly exaggerated about your wonderful qualities. Finally, the letter and offer of measly, but steady salary.
8. Waiting more hours and days for that special person to decide whether to spend her life with you. You want to elope to Vegas, she wants formal wedding. Hey, where can I rent a tux?
9. Pacing hospital floors for hours that seem like days, waiting for new family members to decide to enter the world. Then, make their entrance as small, scarlet, squawking creatures that could never look human. Fortunately, they do and do it perfectly.
10. Waiting and watching as your kids go from diapers to walking and talking, then enjoying more years as a family as they grow up much too fast and leave home much too early. Hey, wait, little birds, stay awhile. Don’t leave the nest quite so soon.
10. Marking long, long hours, days and years on the job, waiting for promotions and hoping for raises. Will I stay employed long enough to get that final retirement ceremony, when all the high-ranking people you despise say nice things about you? Whew, the day finally arrived!
11. Hoping to survive to spend long, happy years of retirement in a warm little home in the hot Arizona desert with your loving spouse, scorpions, rattlers, rabbits, javalinas and coyotes.
12. Finally, as all living creatures must do, await the final moment when you realize whether time is real, or if your entire existence has been some kind of illusion, a sort of TV sitcom for the amusement of the gods.
