Wouldn't It Be Nice?
I am thinking about time--about how I've thought about time in my life, going back to the very early years when this small boy lived one very long day at a time, and only birthdays and Christmas let me know of time's rush. Time meant something very different to adults then. I didn't envy them their struggles with deadlines, schedules, calendars and other time-urgent obligations that crept into the dinner conversation.
Over the years of adolescence, early and late teens, and the stages of adulthood, time of course didn't change. But the feel of it, the pull of its current, a sense of its strange dimensions passing through me--these things have changed, and will change again, given a little more of it between the now and the coming of the last trace of it in this older boy's body.
Write about time and aging and your understanding and relationship to both. That is your writing assignment for today.
This is the kind of thing that used to be the bread-and-butter here at Fragments or at other blogs where I hung out in those days. "Let's all write about _____, your memories of it, how it has created milestones in your life. Send in all your paragraphs or short essays, and I'll post them here and we can discuss the topic together."
I'm working on the same assignment, hoping to kill two birds with this one stone: one, perhaps, for the newspaper column, and a copy for a guest blogger slot I have been asked to help with.
You'd better get started. I'm two paragraphs ahead of you.
Bonus Points: Who can tell why I chose the title?
Comments
Fred--I'm going to guess it's from the Beach Boys song of the same name? It's a song about time . . . .:)
Posted by: Sean Sharp | March 1, 2006 6:26 AM
Beach Boys????
Am I warm or way, way off the mark???
Posted by: Julia | March 1, 2006 7:33 AM
Is it your birthday? Happy Birthday then! (Wouldn't it be nice if we were "younger"?)
Posted by: Raquel | March 1, 2006 8:35 AM
i'm not familiar with the beach boys songs, but my take on the title is what you mentioned in the first paragraph. wouldn't it be nice if we were like a child again with the only time constraint being "be home by dark". for me, every day had endless possibilities and wasn't governed by time slots or hours or what all i needed to get done that day. i am reminded daily of this childlike way of viewing each day with excitement and taking things one day at a time. whereas i wake up and immediately start going over my mental list of things i need to do that day, my son will come in my room and say, "mommy, what are we gonna do on this BEEauutiful day!"
Posted by: Amy F. | March 1, 2006 9:29 AM
Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong
You know it’s gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through
Happy times together we’ve been spending
I wish that every kiss was neverending
Wouldn’t it be nice
Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do
We could be married
And then we’d be happy
Wouldn’t it be nice
You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But lets talk about it
Wouldn’t it be nice
Sorry for the lyrics post, but they are great lyrics.
The scary thing is that now when I read these lyrics which I have listened to a thousand times, the first stanza takes on a new a frightful meaning. "Then we wouldn't have to wait so long" now has a morbid instead of wistful feel to it!
Posted by: Carl | March 1, 2006 9:54 AM
I knew it was the Beach Boys right off the bat, and I didn't think I ever paid much attention to them. Kind of scary, how much pop culture gets into our brains and sticks forever. Kind of neat, too - our unfathomable brains, that is.
Posted by: Lin B | March 1, 2006 10:25 AM
Anniversary? I bet it's your anniversary, according to the lyrics, if those are the right lyrics...Happy, Happy to you and Ann, if that is correct. You ARE going to tell us what the occasion is, aren't you?
Posted by: AnneD | March 1, 2006 12:53 PM
I like that Beach Boys song because it captures young innocent love pretty well.
How much of my life do I remember? I was stupified when told that age 16 was supposed to be one of the best times of my life. A human male sexually peaks at age 19, and his muscle mass maximizes around age 30. Don't even want to know about my mental capacity. What do I have to look forward to now?
Thank God I have children so that I can sort of experience all those times again vicariously.
Posted by: Jim | March 1, 2006 8:25 PM
Here's the location of the piece I composed about time.
Its about time
Posted by: Clarence | March 6, 2006 1:00 PM
"Wouldn't it be nice" if a California Girl came into my life and stayed a little longer.
This Beach Boy's album came out when they were getting long in the tooth and shorter on hair.
1969 was a year of changes. When Tricky Dick came into the White House, I submitted my resignation to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, ending an 18 year career which began at 16 with the Korean War and ended at 34 in a Peace Rally.
My California Girl called it quits after 11 years of being a SAHM raising our 3 daughters. She "wanted to see if she could make it on her own; there had always been a man in her life making the big decisions with little or no input from her." When she handed me the divorce decree, she said: "You were gone all of the time. I might as well have been single."
I read the fine print and discovered that the judge had awarded her full custody of the girls and everything we jointly owned. She graciously let me keep my car and a sleeping bag, then told me to "Hit the Road, Mack! And don't come back no more. . . ."
Since I was unemployed and had few prospects, she spared me the obligations of alimony and child support. A month later, I was in California looking for work when I received an announcement that she had remarried.
For the next 30 years I received periodic midnight phone calls from her, singing the blues about the no-good men in her life who had all abandoned her. She made the last call from Honolulu, where she was dying of pancreatic cancer; she was there with the girls. "I just wanted to say goodbye," she said.
Posted by: Ron McKinney | March 8, 2006 5:19 AM