Apparently the time is now. As a young lad, when my mum would tell me to
do something, she usually meant now. Of
course there were also times when the time isn’t now; it’s right now. I learned a lot as a child.
Sometimes, I think it was to ensure I
wasn’t lost in some sort of space-time continuum, assistance would be offered
to encourage me in the pursuit of doing something now, or right now. It involved the counting of numbers; but
hearing the number ‘three’ was usually followed swiftly by some form of adult
vocabularic verbage that didn’t involve numbers. It was more like suggestively violent,
‘out-loud’ thoughts.
I can recall that old “you can’t leave
the table until you’ve finished your dinner” parenting rule; and also wishing
we had a dog. Time, as a child, was of
no consequence unless you were sitting alone at the dinner table with about
three brussel sprouts on a plate to keep you company. Interestingly enough, as an adult I have
noticed that after a ‘few drinks’ I can pretty much eat things that I would
normally not eat. Now I am not saying
that we should slip a few shots in to our kids’ but, in the pursuit of science,
it would be an interesting finding if youngsters had a glass or three of wine
at the dinner table and then you hear “Blimey, those brussels look a bit
good. Can you pass some over here please,
dad?”
For me, time, as a child, was measured
by my stomach and the street lights. If
my stomach growled then it was probably meal-time and if the lights came on it
was time to be home.
Today, as a fifty-plus adult, I rely
on digital time in many different time zones because of the nature of my
work. I rely on electronic prompts to do
this and to do that because of the nature of my memory.
Oh, and I don’t think that, as parents,
we ever employed the “you can’t leave the table…” rule. Maybe the suggestive violence; but just a
little! But now my kids are adults in their
own right; in fact my son, Martin, is bigger than me so I daren't talk back to him now.
Time flies and times have changed!
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