Yeah, it’s a pretty big subject.
I’m not going to say everything there is to say about time because there isn’t enough of it in which to say things about …. it. Plus, when I suggested to Stickman that I wanted him to illustrate everything there is to illustrate about time, he wasn’t overly keen.
So I’ll just cover the essentials.
I have a bit of a gripe with time at the moment, in that where the bloody buckets is it going???
Apparently the year is 2013. I’m sorry – what? When did that happen? Was there an email? What happened to 2012? Wasn’t 2012, that momentous year full of diamond jubilees, Olympics and potential apocalyptic events, supposed to last a lot longer? (Unless of course there was an apocalyptic event, in which case we’d be none the ruddy wiser.)
Wasn’t it 2006 about three days ago? Or even 2003? And don’t even talk to me about 2010 and 2011, I have literally no idea what happened there. It seems that I take my eye off the ball for one minute to eat a sandwich or go to the toilet, and when I finish my sandwich or come back from the toilet, there’s a new Cliff Richard calendar on my wall and suddenly everyone’s telling me it’s three years later. I just do not understand it.
And I am 28. Allegedly. I haven’t checked my birth certificate for a while, so I can’t be absolutely sure of this, but I’m pretty certain it’s wrong. I was 23 at some point very recently, and people were saying things like ‘You’re still so young’, and now all I get is shop assistants saying ‘Do you have any ID to buy this bottle of… oh no, wait… don’t worry about it.’ I do not appreciate that.
I’ve been told that the older you get the quicker time passes. ‘You’ll wake up one day and you’ll be middle-aged,’ ‘Blink and you’ll miss it,’ ‘Make the most of your youth, it won’t last forever’, cheerful stuff like that. That’s all very well, but I didn’t for one minute think it was actually true. I mean, how dare I be 28! I vividly remember my 21st birthday as if it were yesterday. I remember everything, from the topless dancing men to the rather frightening butch lesbian in the toilets who told me I was ‘A bit of alright’. How could something that happened yesterday have happened 7 years ago?
And it’s not just big time I have an issue with – as in years and stuff – it’s little time. Weeks. Days. I wake up on Saturday morning, I peruse my choice of breakfast cereals, and before I’ve so much as found a suitable spoon, it’s Sunday evening and the consuming of cereals is no longer appropriate.
Then it’s Monday morning and I think to myself ‘Oh, how I wish it was Friday,’ and then just as I’ve begun to stare wistfully out of the window it suddenly becomes Wednesday afternoon, and before I’ve registered that it’s Wednesday afternoon it’s Friday evening and I haven’t planned anything fun to do because I’ve been too busy thinking it was Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon but wishing it was Friday, and I consequently spend Friday evening sad and alone and wishing I had more ruddy time.
Here’s a prime example of how time is screwing us over. It’s now mid-February. Actually, not even mid-February, because February can’t be arsed with itself and short-changes us on the 28th or 29th, so it’s practically two-thirds February. Then it’ll be March. There’ll be flowers everywhere, we won’t need to wear our coats and we’ll start thinking about cutting the grass, and then it’ll be Easter and we’ll all think ‘Oh, how lovely to eat roast lamb on a warm sunny day and watch the daffodils nodding in the breeze,’ and then it’ll be summer and we’ll think ‘It might as well be winter because it’s so ****ing cold and miserable,’ and then it’ll be winter and we’ll think ‘I wish it was summer because it’s so ****ing cold and miserable’, and then it’ll be December and we’ll all suddenly stop and go ‘HOLD ON A MINUTE. WE HAVE LITERALLY JUST HAD CHRISTMAS. I HAVE ONLY JUST THROWN AWAY THE LAST OF THE TURKEY. HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY BE CHRISTMAS AGAIN? WHAT IN THE NAME OF HIGH HECKLINGS IS GOING ON???’
See? We cannot win. Someone, somewhere, has decided to play a little joke on humanity, and is cranking the Wheel of Time a lot faster than he should be. Some little oik who really cannot be trusted with such an important job, who’s probably very demoralised because being a Wheel of Time Operator isn’t all it was cracked up to be, and whose hourly rate has been slashed because more money has had to be ploughed into the Ozone Layer Engineers, has thought ‘Bugger it, I’m going to have some fun’.
Well that little oik can just stop it, and slow things the hell down. Because I am not ready to be old and grey and wrinkled and smelling of lavender just yet, and at this rate that’ll be next week.
So please, Wheel of Time Operator: have pity on humanity and slow down. And if I hear so much as a whisper in the next 10 months that it’s going to be 2014 next year, I will go ruddy mental.
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BECKY SAYS THINGS 
I love your drawings, especially the one where you come out of the toilet 🙂
Thank you! I liked that one too 🙂
Couldn’t have said it better myself…seriously! Wtf time…I feel so ripped off. It’s gonna be Christmas again like TOMORROW… 😦
Seriously ripped off. Is nothing sacred in this world? I mean I swear it was the 90s, like, four months ago.
Yep. Bloody nightmare. Something should be done about it really. Oscar’s starting fecking school in September – he was only born last week. Urgh.
Urgh that’s rank. Is he even crawling yet? You can’t send a week old baby to school cousin. That’s just pushy parenting.
I heard someone explain why time seems to go faster the older you get- when you’re four, a year is one whole fourth of your life, a massive percentage, and it seems to last forever. When you’re forty, however, a year is a mere 1/40th of your life. I’m not sure how that really explains the passage of time, but it may explain why I’ve never liked fractions.
I’ve always explained it that way too… each passing year seems like a smaller portion of your overall experience, so it seems shorter. I know you just said you didn’t agree with that logic, but I might as well throw my hat into the ring. (P.S. There’s no sport where that figure of speech makes sense)
I guess it does make sense, really. And while we still have time, perhaps we ought to invent the sport of hat boxing! (We might have to liven it up somehow…)
Boxing is open to variants. Have you ever heard of chess boxing?
No I haven’t! That would sure be more interesting to watch. Please tell me there’s golf boxing as well!
There may be more of a biologic or brain chemical factor involved in how the perception of time changes as we age. Or there may be a little Stickman Wheel of Time Operator running the hamster wheel inside of our heads.
I think it’s important not to overthink these things. (Hah, says the girl who’s just written an entire blogpost dedicated to doing just that.) We must remember, as undergroundpewster points out, that it’s all down to the Stickman Wheel of Time Operator. He’s the bastard we need to track down. He’ll pay for knowing years off our lives and making us think about fractions.
Hmmmm…maybe you’re spending too much time in the restroom? IBS? Talk to your doctor about which medication is right for you.
Two observations, bud:
1. Yesterday, I learned who Richard Briers is, and today I learned a new word… oik! I love learning new things!
2. As a former high school art club president (hold the applause!), I have to say that, despite all appearances to the contrary, you actually have a fairly good artistic eye. The postures of your stick figures are actually quite excellent and subtle… the sign of a true artist is someone who can say a lot with very little.
Fun fact: High school art club is where I met and started dating Arto’s future wife (Leslie). Several years later, I met Arto while he and I were attending school in Canada, and then years after that I suggested to Leslie that she and Arto would make a good couple. Having never met before, they played a prank on me over Facebook where they became “in a relationship”, then got “married” (Leslie photoshopped their faces into a wedding photo) and then had a nasty “divorce.” Then, the following year, Arto came to the U.S. for a roadtrip, Leslie decided to join us, and they fell in love, he moved from Finland to California, and now they (along with their two cats, Jackson Miff and Pepper Notjules) live happily together in a condo in greater San Diego. Life is a funny thing.
Now, to finalize my Becky-related lunch break, I’m off to embarrass myself (and perhaps you for the sheer act of knowing me) on your Facebook page.
Ruddy buckets, that’s a serious anecdote! And one of the cutest things EVER. You must be Dr Love, then, if you bring people together like that, even if you do get cruel pranks played on you in the meantime. 🙂
And you had a Becky-related lunchbreak? Cripes, you must have been seriously bored 😉
Thanks bud 🙂
It was an awesome lunch break, and now I have a new challenge: incorporating the term “Ruddy buckets” into a future post. Thank you Becky for all you do!
Could be worse. You could be up in your thirties and look up and your infant is somehow hitting puberty and preparing to go to junior high and you now think people in their twenties are whippersnappers even though you could swear you were just twenty weeks ago. And the teachers and the doctors are younger than you are. And the college kids at the university where you work were born when you graduated high school and have never heard the word Xerox before. And you’re old, old, old.
And the weekly time warp too! I’m wishing for Friday. It’s Tuesday and when Friday hits, all I’ll wanna do is sleep. Because I’m so exciting! And then suddenly it’s friggin’ Monday all over again. F*ck you, time.
Jeez that sounds awful. That’s thirties, is it? God. I’m nearly there. Well, I say ‘nearly’ – supposedly not for another two years, but knowing time and its evil ways, I’ll probably wake up tomorrow and will have gone straight to bloody forties. F*ck you, time. F*ck you. 😉
You have such a witty style my friend 🙂
Aw, thank you, I appreciate that 🙂
🙂 🙂 😉
love stickman and love your posts. You crack me up, but you’re so RIGHT ON. I will tell you (from the other side of 40–shhhh, don’t tell anyone) that it doesn’t and won’t slow down, but you (and me) have a long long long way to go before we smell like lavender and are old and wrinkly. That sense of humor is going to keep you young for a very long time:-)
Well that’s a totally lovely thing to say, thank you very much. I won’t go and buy that hairnet just yet then… Thank you so much for reading 🙂
This. Made me laugh. So much. I’m in denial about Stickman and his Wheel of Time even existing; I still have Christmas lights up in my apartment, and up they shall stay, until July … or tomorrow. Who can tell the difference anymore?
Well you’re very sensible for not taking them down because Christmas will be tomorrow so just keep them up. It’s those fools that thing they’ve got 12 months between Christmases that’ll feel silly. Mark my words.
PS Thank you 🙂
Time – definitely your best yet.
Wow, thanks Judith x
Yes. I still think the 1990s were the last decade. And each time, I’m corrected it’s like my mind is blown. 1999 was really four years ago, why won’t anyone believe me?
What? 1999 was four years ago? But…..wasn’t it like… oh. I’ve got no idea where we are.
You will soon be old and gray, and you will long for the days when frightening butch lesbians hit on you.
Never mind old and grey, I yearn for those days now.
Wait til you’re 38! I sneeze and 45 minutes is gone.
Oh God and I LOVE sneezing.
Ahhh Becky, you take the words right out of my mouth, I’m 27, 28 this year and it only seems like last month I was in college… trying to find ways to escape to go to the pub for a bit of underage drinking. Now here I am, 27 with a bad job, a broken car, frown lines appearing on my forehead and a long bushy beard from lack of wanting to shave. Imagine what I’m going to look like when I’m 50!
I remember when weeks used to drag, it used to take ages to get to the weekend, now here we are, they’re flying by, it’s February, nearly March! It’s just not on. It’ll not be long until we’re 30 and then that is the beginning of the end.
Well I am ALREADY 28, the worry lines are well and truly visible, I REALLY don’t like staying up past 2am, and I often have a hankering for a cup of Heinz tomato soup. 50s, here we come! 🙂
I remember I’d be out drinking at this time ten years ago, I’d be on it from 11am after getting in at 5am from the night before, I never understood how people could go out at 8pm as the night’s practically already over. Now it’s like “Whoa, you want to meet BEFORE 8?! We’re not early 20s anymore”
Ah, you see I’ve gone the other way – I’m a fan of early after work starts – 6 / 6.30pm – which means I can stagger home at half 9 / 10, shove some food in my mouth, and get a nice early night. Everyone’s a winner. Albeit an aging, hurtling-towards-middle-age winner.