It’s about time
- Classic City News
- 8 hours ago
- 4 min read
By Eddie Whitlock
I am obsessed with time: I will admit that. I think I always have been. Lately, though, my focus is on how little time I have left.
Men in my family die at 70. Sometimes, death comes a little sooner; rarely, a little later.
If I were to die on my 70th birthday, that would mean I have 134 Saturdays left.
I remember sitting with my father when I was very young, waiting in the car while my mother visited someone in the hospital. The old man and I played a game called “Guess when a minute is up.” One of us would hold his watch and say “Now!” when the second hand hit the 12. The other would say “Now!” when he thought a minute had passed.
My first job was in a radio station, where people paid for advertising by the length of the time their ad was. Typically,these were thirty- or sixty-second commercials. When recording a commercial, we had to be precise in timing them. Airtime was the product we were selling.
My last job was working in a library, where people checked out books for two weeks. We handed them a receipt with the book’s due date. We loaned out a product at no charge, but we asked the customers to be aware that this was a product being shared and to respect that others also wanted to spend time with the product.
Time. It’s important.
With only 134 Saturdays left, I’m paying even more attention to it. My “Best By” date is behind me. Now I’m the lactose-free milk in the back of the refrigerator, hoping I have the chance at one more bowl of high-fiber cereal before I’m tossed.
In my reflection on time and its passing, I treated myself to a lot of music that also reflected. I highly recommend “Those Were the Days,” a song sung by Mary Hopkin and produced by Paul McCartney. Enjoy it, reflect on it, and move on. It’s not the point, but it’s a damned good song.
Remind yourself how time abuses you by listening to Joe Jackson’s “Got the Time.” If you’ve ever worked a by-the-hour job, you’ll appreciate that tick-tick-ticking in your head.
“There never seems to be enough time,” said Jim Croce, “to do the things you want to do.” He nailed it with “Time in a Bottle.” Things you must do make their demands, taking away so much of the time. So much time.
Green Day said that time grabbed you by the wrist and directed you where to go. They were right, but I usually feel like it has me by the throat and not the wrist.
Fleetwood Mac observed that time makes us bolder. It does, but it makes us more cautious, too.
As those grains rush through the hourglass now, I turn to less reflective tunes. After all, what was Morris Day’s reply to “What Time is It?”
Folks, it’s time to get wild and loose. That’s what time it is.
Look at where this nation is as its 250th birthday approaches. Like me, it appears to be counting the days till it is no more.
I look back to its beginnings and see two things: Stated ideals and failed implementation of those ideals.
I love the ideals written by Thomas Jefferson, but I can’t love a guy who considered a woman his property and raped her repeatedly and then didn’t acknowledge his children. “All men are created equal” should have been a cornerstone philosophy that would guide every –
Okay. Let me stop there because that’s not where this column is supposed to go.
I’m talking about time.
I do see myself as having a 70-year lifespan, but I don’t think our country is limited to a lifespan. I’m aware there are historic durations of democracies. But to a great extent, the history we know was written by a specific group of people. You know who I’m talking about. I’m from that group.
The Chambers Brothers did a great song called “Time Has Come Today.” In addition to an adequate amount of cowbell, the song says we “can’t put it off another day.” Sam Cooke saw it, too, and said, “A change is gonna come.” That change is coming. I see it in the popularity of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacey Abrams, and Tammy Duckworth. It’s change from folks who weren’t part of the group that wrote the history we read.
If Pam Bondi is right, prosecuting everyone in the Epstein files would collapse our society. Let me raise my eyebrows and one corner of my mouth and say that I don’t think that’s “our” society she’s talking about. It’s the society that undermines democracy and needs to collapse.
Let me try again to get back to the subject of time.
It’s running out for me. My bucket list is short. Seeing the end of the current administration is the only specific item on it. Sure, visiting Haiti is on there, too, but I don’t travel well these days.
Time is not running out for the United States of America. It’s running out for the system that currently dominates the country.
If your time is running out, too – and it is because tomorrow is not guaranteed – you owe it to the future to promote the change needed in this country.
Ignore the ignoble life of Thomas Jefferson; demand we live up to his lofty words that say we are all equal.
For me, time is running out. I’m fine with that.
For the nation, the time for change – good change – has come. I hope I’m around to see it.
Eddie Whitlock is a Georgia native, graduate of UGA, and wannabe writer. He retired in 2021 from the Athens-Clarke County Library, where he worked as coordinator of volunteers, community service supervisor, and vending machine scapegoat.
