The thing about time... It flies.

 

Everyone says that, but then you're like, really? Because I'm meeting someone at two for sushi and that time just won't seem to fly up and meet me. But then you think,

 

Hey, remember last year?  Some friends and I went up to the beach for my birthday but first we stopped at Olive Garden and we wanted the same waiter we had when we did the same thing the year before, when my mom made the poor guy sing and he turned beet red. He wasn't working though so we chased him across the parking lot and he didn't remember us and my cousin made a total fool of herself and we all stalked him on facebook and Eliane was spazzing out cause he didn't add her until two hours after he added the rest of us. And then Amber kept looking out the window cause one time a couple hours ago this guy peeked in. And then we went to the World Market and discovered crack mints.

 

And remember this summer when I was on the mission's trip and I cried as we drove away from the house of one of the deacons at a church in Nova Scotia and I didn't know why I was crying. I remember because it wasn't actually that long ago.

 

But then it's not my sixteenth birthday at the beach, and it's not my seventeeth, and I'm not getting a free makeover with my friends at the beach for my twelfth birthday because we're going down to Atlanta for mine and my cousin's eighteenth birthday because we're eighteen. When did that happen?

 

And then you remember that October fifteenth that guy you like had to leave for Marine basic training, but he had to be there on the fourteenth so he had to say goodbye on the thirteenth and I still remember the way it felt when he held me and that I smelled like a farm because I had spent the day on a farm. And I still remember how it felt when he held me at arm's length and didn't kiss me because he was telling me he'd be back and it was January twenty-seventh and it was a month ago but that's not really a long time.

 

And then you're at college and you're texting that guy that your brother wanted you to go out with except that he had a girlfriend now. Your brother pushed it anyway because he thought the guy was about to break up with the girl but he didn't and you're good friends now with both of them. 

 

And now you're graduating with your best friends that you didn't know five years ago.

 

And now you're twenty-three and that Marine guy you liked so much is back but you don't know what to do because it's been so long and can things really work out now? You never forgot about him but five years is.. it's a long time, right? It's such a long time even in retrospect, but it's not that long, really.

 

And then you're twenty-five and you've been talking to this guy (I don't know if it's the Marine or not, I'm not you) but you can't decide if you should keep waitressing and EMT nursing in Charleston or if you should go back to college and get your master's in nursing so you can go teach at a college in China.

 

And then you're thirty-five and who knows who you're talking to but you're in Salt Lake City, Utah, and you've been helping out in a growing church and you still don't know where you need to be, but you have time you're only thirty-five.

 

And now you're forty-five, who knows what you're doing or whether or not you're married or where you are but you're glad you didn't die young like you had wanted to because that didn't give you very much time at all.

 

And now you're fifty-five and who knows anything about you except that your wrinkles are getting a bit deeper and you're wishing you'd died young but now it's too late for that, might as well keep on living, but it's not even that far away because you're looking back and you remember every step like a crystal until Alzheimer's takes your brain away from you.

 

And it didn't even take a long time, and now it's two and you need to meet your friend for sushi.