Tempus fugit. That’s what the Romans said, and they knew what they were talking about because "time does fly." What they failed to mention was that tempus fugits faster and faster the older you get.
When I was a child, tempus never did fugit. A day seemed to go on forever. Weeks were incomprehensibly long, never mind a month. A year seemed so unfathomable that it could have been a lifetime. Christmas came so infrequently that I could hardly remember the last one; the same was true of my birthday.
I often heard my elders say that time flies. Then, in a 9th grade Latin class, I learned how over 2,000 years ago people said the same thing – tempus fugit.
It seemed a strange concept to me. I seemed to have lots of time – far more than I could ever use, anyway.
All that began to change in high school. Tempus began to pass a little more quickly, although I wouldn’t say it fugited. I resented the rush to get to school each morning. At the same time, I began to look forward to the break from classes at lunch. I could hardly wait for the end of the school day, which marked my freedom for a few hours.
A week became my most common time denominator. Perhaps that was because I began looking forward to the weekends for the first time in my life.
Then suddenly, I graduated from high school, even thought that day had always seemed like it was an eternity away. Graduating must have been the watershed because from that point, tempus actually started to fugit.
Over time, the acceleration of tempus became more apparent. It really began to fugit. With each passing day, week, month, and year, it seemed to gather speed. About the time, I married, settled into a career, and started my family; tempus was clearly fugiting vigorously. The days began to blend into one another, and I wasn’t sure whether a thing happened yesterday or the day before. Weeks were only about six days long, and Christmas seemed to come every nine months. My employer’s pay period became my common time denominator.
To make a long story short, one day I hit 50. Boy, did tempus ever start fugiting then. My kids were suddenly adults who miraculously knew far more than “their old man.”
Christmas came every six months, and each month came and went like a week. Some mornings when I dressed for the day, it seemed I had just dressed two or three hours ago.
Therefore, the fugiting continues to this day. I’m resigned to it, but Tempus will fugit faster and faster until … who knows? Oddly, in the midst of this ‘time warp,’ I still feel the same inside as that kid who had all the time in the world. Although I recognize life is passing me by like freeway traffic passing the paint on the pavement, and I clearly understand this can’t go on much longer before life becomes nothing but a blur. It is almost there now. Who knows? Perhaps it means that I’ve got very little tempus left to fugit.