School's Out
Aug 13 2020
The endless summers of childhood,
when it was always hot and sunny
and time was as sluggish
as the heat made us feel.
When school was hypothetical
but furtively loomed;
like a high stone wall
out beyond the horizon.
Except we remember what we recall;
the ball games and picnics and sleeping in tents
with flashlights and bears
we thought we'd heard.
As well as the long trips by car
with the hump underfoot,
stuck in the middle
between two big brothers
who got their own windows, of course.
And conveniently forget
the long dusty days
when all the neighbourhood kids
sprawled on a hot concrete curb,
waiting for time to pass
or waiting for lunch.
Blinking in merciless sun
as we idly tossed stones
and scuffed our feet through the dirt.
When our lives are full
and we're busy, absorbed, immersed
time goes fast;
so how odd, looking back
how slow it seems time went.
While when it drags
in the dog days of summer
how it flies,
wondering where August went
when there we are
shopping for school supplies.
But fast or slow, nostalgia decides
and the past is always golden.
Yet while we long
for a fondly remembered childhood
we forget how powerless and bored
we often felt.
That dusty curb, re-telling stale jokes.
The middle seat,
jousting for legroom
and needing to take a pee
but told you have to hold it,
because you knew better than not to go
when we stopped for gas.
I have now gotten old
the brothers older.
The family car
has mostly turned to rust
in some lost auto graveyard.
And the school has been closed for years,
because there aren't enough kids anymore
in this sleepy outer suburb.
Is time speeding up
as the years go on?
Has summer gotten shorter
the novelty worn-off?
And will memory
always be this long?
Physicists may be able to measure time down to a single atomic vibration. Philosophers may opine that the reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. And French authors may lament times lost and remembrance of things past. But this poem is about perceptions of time, and how subjective it is. Because when we're so busy that time seems to fly by, all the experience and novelty and memories make it seem slow, looking back: a full life, with lots to think about. And when we're bored and time drags, there is nothing to remember; so in retrospect, time seems to have flown by. Time invariably goes faster, the older we get. Because for a 5 year old, not only is life full of new and challenging experiences, not to mention constant learning, one additional year represents a 5th of his life. A year at age 75 is probably a lot less eventful, and certainly a smaller slice of a much longer life.
And it's a rumination on memory, as well. Its fallibility. Its confabulation. Because memory is unreliable: repeatedly reconstructed each time a memory is recalled; informed by recent experience, mood, salience. Nostalgia, especially, plays tricks with us: selectively remembering only the good stuff.
I prefer being older, prefer this time of life. But still, there is something missing: that magical quality that childhood summers had, when time was endless and everything seemed possible.
...And something for my younger readers. In the old days, when almost every American car (and there were only American cars!) was rear wheel drive, there was always a hump for the drive shaft. My old Jeep had one, as I recall. But you only noticed it if you were stuck in the middle in the back seat, which I invariably was!
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