T I M E

Time
Shirley Moyer

It’s time to leave. Time to bank. Time, time, time. I’m sick of hearing what time it is. Let’s give it another word — maybe lightning, or make up a word — froshnik. Eh, that sounds like a Russian dessert. How about driggleschmuck? No, too long and who would say it’s driggleschmuck for your medicine?

Andy Rooney has covered the subject with a display of worn-out watches that no longer keep time, or even run. To get our attention, his old Timex is submerged in a fish tank of piranhas. It used to be his favorite until it was run over by a steamroller. But the dang thing is still running. He said he’d wear it but the reek of tar on his wrist annoyed him.

My house is full of timepieces. Everywhere you look there is a reminder of driggleschmuck. When you don’t see them, you hear them singing, “Goodbye, you’ll never see this moment again.”

Famous people have been making “Time” quotes for hundreds of years: Shakespeare, back in the 1500s: “Time travel in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots…” Boy, he sure liked the word.
Edgar Allan Poe got his two-cents worth in: “Keeping time, time, time in a sort of Runic rhyme to the…”

And how can we forget Abraham Lincoln? “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

Elizabeth Akers Allen in the late 1800s wrote, “Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight! Make me a child again, just for to-night!”

Daily, someone is bound to remind us with Benjamin Franklin’s, “Time is Money.” It’s doubtful, however, if anyone has said more about Time than Shakespeare. His works overflow with the word. More cogitation has gone into the passage, the coming, the ever-present, and the unknown realm of Time. Why not call it Emit? (Time in reverse.) After all, emit means exhaust, expel, vapor, steam, smoke — which is what time becomes before our eyes.

When I was young I never understood why it was time to Grow Up. Then I grew up and have trouble understanding it’s time to Act My Age. I took time to assemble a few thoughts, knowing it’s a fool who writes an essay on what someone else has said. I simply had too much driggleschmuck on my hands.

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OnWords & UpWords
Shirl, ReJoyce! whatever..
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