An e-mail from Classmates.com came today reminding me that this was my 35th anniversary of graduating from high school. They needn’t have reminded me.
I have no trouble remembering that I graduated from high school in May 1974, or that I enlisted in the Navy in July 1974, or that I started college in May 1980, or that I graduated from college 25 years ago come this May.
The truth is that milestones kind of become more irrelevant after time. Time itself is a like some kind of cosmic fun house in how it lets one see the past during one period as if it happened just yesterday and other incidents seem like they were oh so long ago. If this self-reflection took place in a seemingly logical manner — where each and every time the things happening long ago seem like a long time and more recent events appear as if they were only but days ago — it would hardly be worth one’s while to ponder it. But that isn’t how one always views memories.
Each time I hear the Zombies’ “Time of the Season” I am carried back almost 35 years ago. I have just reported to Navy boot camp. It’s a pretty hot July day at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes Naval Training Center, Illinois. I think that it is the day after the night we arrived at O’Hare from Houston and after checking in on the base got to bed at midnight (excuse me, it is 2400 hours now boot!) only to be rudely awakened at 0500 by a bunch of racket for something called “reveille.”
“What’s your name (what’s your name), Who’s your daddy? (who’s your daddy?) He rich? (Is he rich like me?)” sings Zombies’ lead singer Colin Blunstone, as I wait in what will seem to be millions of miles of lines before my enlistment ends four years later. This line is to get measured for and receive uniforms. I’m going to look like a real sailor … eventually. I don’t really know why I remember that particular instance. Perhaps it is when I first felt inertia. I don’t know.
Flash forward to a couple of months ago. Actually, I tried to flashback to a few months ago earlier this week. It happened when my supervisor on my part-time government job asked me and my colleague why we were not satisfactorily meeting a particular milestone for work. The work I do, however, tends to happen in a cyclical fashion and even though I suppose I would be smart to keep hard copies of every schedule I work with on my computer, I feel it’s kind of pointless in striving for a paperless workplace. Thus, no copy, no memory.
Both of these instances — one long ago but feeling like yesterday and another figuratively yesterday and feeling long ago are not earth-shaking events like when I thought I was going to be blown up fighting a gasoline truck fire, or graduating from college. The point is that time is just as arbitrary as life itself often seems to be, or is, depending on your point of view.
After a certain point in one’s life every day feels like a milestone and not a bad one at that.
***It’s true. Time holds quite a fascination for me. I think it was the visit to that clock museum in New Zealand 31 years and four months ago that did it.