I’m processing time differently than I used to.
I’ve been noticing this for decades now, and it’s a common observation: time speeds up as I grow older. I know it isn’t literally speeding up, the stately progression of sun and moon and planets across the sky tells me otherwise. Rather, my perception of the speed of the passage of time is changing.
It’s a phenomenon I first noticed after becoming a parent, when it was clear my tiny daughters experienced the world in general, and time specifically, in a very different way from my wife and I. The world was the block we lived on. Minutes felt like years to them. A season—Spring, say, or Winter—lasted a lifetime.
When my daughters were older and my Dad lived with us, we had three different views of the passage of time in our home. My daughters measured life in days and weeks, and when a day loomed particularly bad or good, it seemed to last forever to them. My Dad viewed the world across a patient expanse of decades, and greeted nearly all events with gentle acceptance. I was somewhere in the middle, able to see my daughters’ days from a longer view, and able to put their accomplishments and disappointments in perspective, yet unable to fully grasp the enormity and nuance of my Dad’s world view.
Which brings me, as it often does, to baseball.
I no longer live with my Dad or my daughters, though my daughters live close, and my Dad lives forever in memory and outsized influence. I still watch baseball every day, though no longer with my Dad (my wife doesn’t watch, but is close by, graciously feigning interest when I update her on the score).
A change from when my Dad and I watched together: I don’t watch it live anymore. East coast games start at 5, here in Colorado, and I am still finishing up my day by then, tying up loose writing ends, taking my afternoon walk (well documented in these posts), developing a plan for supper with my wife.
I’ve disconnected the watching of the game from the “live event” of the game. It’s just another TV show now, albeit one where the ending is announced on the sports pages immediately afterward.
I’ll start watching around 7 usually. When I first started doing this, I’d fast forward through all the commercials, all the pitching changes. If the score grew lopsided, I’d jump ahead a few innings to see if the game got interesting. Most importantly, if it was late, and I was impatient, I’d hit the little icon that fast forwards the show 30 seconds. 30 seconds is close to the time between pitches while watching a game. It seemed tailor-made for baseball.
It ruined the game for me. Watch a pitch, click the “30 Sec RR” button, watch the next pitch. It’s an easy way to compress an inning into a synopsis of a inning. It’s like reading the Cliff Notes of the game. I lost the conversations taking place between the guys in the booth (Keith, Gary, and Ron: best booth in the business). I lost the slow build of suspense between pitches, noting the baserunners and the count, wondering what the pitcher is going to throw next, watching the signals from the third base coach and predicting if a steal or a hit-and-run is in the works.
Mostly I lost the cadence and the rhythm. The slow march from pitch to pitch, like the stately progression of the sun and moon and planets mentioned above, as the pitcher and batter adjust their strategies to match the count, battling to get ahead in the steady accumulation of balls and strikes, outs and innings.
There are 30 seconds between pitches, but they aren’t empty seconds. Your imagination fills those pauses. Life fills those pauses. And you begin to realize the enjoyment of the game doesn’t have that much to do with the pace of the game, or the outcome of any individual event, or even the score. It doesn’t have to do with winning and losing.
It has to do with experiencing the game in an approximation of real time, even if you are watching it after the fact. The game and the result of the game are two different things.
I don’t use the “30 Sec RR” button much anymore. Sometimes I don’t even fast forward through commercials and pitching changes. I’ve been watching baseball for decades, and this is the rhythm I am used to. This is the pace that best lets me enter the game, and experience it in a full, unhurried way.
I started out analog, went digital, and am now attempting to recreate the analog experience. I want to experience the events happening on TV in something approximating real time.
Dad understood. Someday my kids might too.
Peace.
The links. As always, if you like my writing, yadayadayada.
August’s story: Monster
July’s story: Goodneighbor.com
June’s story: Feral
May’s story: Nine Lives
April’s story: Prince Albert in a Can
March’s story: Fuck, Marry, Kill
February’s story: Veronica Scissors
My first novel, Life Under Water
My erotic flash fiction series, Serious Moonlight (as J G Cain)
I have thought about this perception of time thing quite a bit, and I think it's because of the fraction of our experience each increment of time represents. When we are 5 years old, a year is a full 20% of our total experience, at my advanced age of 50 (in 3 weeks, I will turn 50!!!) a year is a mere 2% of my total experience, therefore seems ephemeral at best. :0) Just my thoughts on something I've thought about before.