Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory"
I think we've all felt like this once or twice.
It my six decades on this spinning galactic dust ball, I’ve experienced time in multiple dimensions. Before you suggest I step away from the coffee and whatever I’m splashing into it, let me explain.
Time is an established measure, right? Sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four fours in a day, etc. You can’t change it or control it. Some folks are really good at managing chronometry. Others take a different approach. For thirty-five years, I worked with both in a job that lived and died on coffee and deadlines. There was real time and there was reporter time, which is kinda like farmer time. Example—Reporter, “I’ll have that story done by noon.” Um . . . you do mean noon today, right? Farmer, “I’ll be in for supper by 7.” Um . . . is that Central or Pacific Time?
When you retire, time takes on a whole new meaning. At first, it feels like there’s more of it than you know what to do with as you explore the concept of having at least forty more hours a week to call your own.
As you relax and pursue the interests that you previously had to carve out of barely existent spare time while you worked, you start to wonder, “How did I do all of that—hobbies, volunteering, housework, family stuff—when I was working full time?” It’s a mystery. Perhaps the space/time continuum shifts to accommodate those years so we don’t go completely insane.
Time stretches and contracts like a rubber band. Remember when you were seven years old and waiting for Christmas? For many of us "old folks," it wasn’t even mentioned until the Thanksgiving leftovers were cleared away, then December lasted at least three months. Now, Mariah Carey starts singing “All I Want for Christmas” three weeks before Halloween. You can buy trick-or-treat candy and candy canes at the same time.
Everyone knows time goes super fast when you’re working through a training problem with your performance dog and you've entered a bunch of upcoming trials. Three weeks off from the show ring seems like a reasonable amount of time to get back on track, except it sails past in a snap, and suddenly you’re back in the ring with that troublesome exercise that may or may not be new and improved. Where did the time go?
Privately, I think people who train and show dogs possess the ability to manipulate some aspects of time in a way normal people don’t. Don’t be offended if you consider yourself normal. If you’re one of my “dog friends,” you’re not, so don’t worry about it.
Dog people can look at a judging schedule and immediately start doing math in their head that would escape them if presented in any other way: if I’m the fifth dog in the ring at 9 a.m. and I need to get there by 8 a.m. at the absolute latest, it’s an hour and a half drive to the show site, plus a ten minute stop to grab drive-through breakfast, then factor in construction zones, add a cushion of fifteen minutes so I can get out of the garage and off the farm ahead of the morning implement-moving, grain-hauling, cattle chores mayhem going up and down the lane, how many aliens does it take to make pancakes? This is why sometimes I consider just arriving at a show reason enough to raise the win flag.
A number of years ago, I traveled to an out-of-state dog show with a friend. We each planned to drive separately but would go together. I arrived at her house on the day we were to leave, very pleased to be early. I was excited because we were already ahead of the game and winning at the eternal human vs. time battle. I anticipated my friend ready to go, her vehicle idling at the curb in front of her house, and we would sweep out of town like warriors riding into battle.
My friend did not share my world view. For some folks, leaving at a specific time means actually leaving at that time. For others, it means it’s time to start getting ready to go. These two types of people should never, under any circumstances, ever travel together.
At the appointed time to leave, my travel partner began packing her cooler in the kitchen. This was followed by loading her van with crates, chair, gear bags, article bags, food bags, extra bags, bags containing mystery items, and finally, dogs. Then we had to drive through town to the bank so she could stop at the ATM, followed by a side trip to buy gas. We were an hour late before we ever started.
Being the slightly (ahem—cough, cough) OCD person I am, I had done all those things the night before. Well, except for packing the dogs and the cooler. Any obedience exhibitor will tell you the latter takes a stupid amount of time because it’s vital to get the proper balance of water, soda, dog treats and human lunch with ice or freezer packs because nobody wants food poisoning from warm tuna salad. Coolers are always too small or too big to accommodate our needs, but that is a topic for another day.
So yeah. OCD me.
A number of years ago, I was hospitalized with a wildly racing heartbeat. Apparently a heart rate of nearly two hundred beats per minute is only acceptable if you are a lumberjack or a fetus. I was neither.
The attending ER physician lacked any kind of empathy, along with medical training. He informed me there was nothing wrong with me and I was a Type A personality having a panic attack. (He was partly right – after being hauled to the ER in ambulance complete with lights and sirens and my heart going whacko, I admitted to feeling just a tiny bit panicky.) It turned out I have a form of atrial fibrillation that is hard to detect on a traditional EKG but can accelerate my heart rate and knock it out of rhythm like nobody’s business. In any event, the doctor didn’t believe me when I told him I wasn’t a Type A personality and I’d never had a panic attack in my life.
But . . . I am often frighteningly well organized because being organized is my ticket to getting things done on time. We OCD folks are like that. When I plan to leave for a dog show at six a.m., that means the dogs and I are in the car, going down the lane at 5:59 p.m. Not everyone else works that way. I have friends whose approach to most things in life is “I’ll get there when I get there.” And you know what, that’s absolutely fine. I kinda envy them. There’s a lot to be said for refusing to play by the universe’s demands.
I’m telling you all this because I’m anxiously waiting the final proof copy of “How to Live with a Ghost,” which is the next-to-the-last step in production before it becomes a real live book. I’m also waiting on cover art, and let me tell you, it is like being a seven-year-old waiting for Christmas.
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