David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Jan. 17, 2006

If I remember correctly, time sure is speeding by

I had a great memory when I was a kid. At least I think I did. I could be wrong. It was a while ago.

One of the most important realizations I've made in my adult life is that time goes much, much, much faster the older I get. Don't believe me? If I wrote that last sentence when I was 22, I would have used only one "much," but at 35 I feel a triple "much" sufficiently describes the acceleration. By the time I'm 60, I'll probably need a string of 15. You get the idea. The slower the speed, the more my memory absorbs.

But I know time doesn't actually pass faster. I've studied enough science to understand that unless you're traveling at tremendous velocities - the likes of which made Einstein's hair stand on end -- time is a constant.

Unless, as in my case, you're 15 years old.

A year is a year is a year regardless if I'm 15, 35, 55 or 75, but my perception was that my 15th year lasted, oh, 700 days. I wanted a driver's license so badly that I was out of my mind with anticipation. Certain that a driver's license would solve all my problems, I spent my entire 15th year like a tightly compressed spring. All my teen angst would instantly melt away the moment the DMV lady in the overstuffed brown polyester pants handed me that little laminated document with my picture on it. Dates, road trips, driving myself to school, my own stereo with my own music - the options were limitless.

The reality of having a driver's license couldn't possibly live up to my self-made hype, but life slowed to a crawl as I waited for June 19, 1986 to roll around.

These days life doesn't slow to a crawl much anymore. It's like someone pushed the fast-forward button. Because time goes by so much faster as I get older, my poor little overtaxed brain can't keep up like it used to, and I know why.

When I was 5 years old, there wasn't as much to remember. I'd been alive for a mere 1,800 days, of which only the last 800 my young brain remembered. If your memory database is only 800 days, it's no big trick to remember exactly what you ate for dinner six nights ago. At that age, everything's new. Everything makes an impression. Everything's a big deal. Mom sent me to my room for the rest of the day because I bit my little sister. My day was ruined. My life was over. But then a new day dawned and all was right in the world -- just like that. A year was 20 percent of my life.

A new day dawned again, and I woke up a 15-year-old. At that age I'd seen so many days that one bad day was no big deal. I knew many more were to come. Days came and went, but at 15 a year was an immeasurably huge amount of time. A year might as well have been an epoch. My memory was as sharp as it had ever been or ever would be. I could recall any tidbit of information at will, most of it totally useless. A year was 6.7 percent of my life.

I woke up the next morning 25 and married. We were living the easy D.I.N.K. life -- Double Income, No Kids. At that age, my memory was still pretty sharp, but gaps were forming. I'd done quite a bit in my short tenure as an adult (or so I thought), but sometimes I had trouble remembering where I was or what was happening when a certain incident occurred. A year was 4.0 percent of my life.

I woke up this morning 35 and married with children. For me to remember some events, I have to put them in relative context to big lifetime events that I'll never forget -- my first day of kindergarten, riding bikes and playing Atari with my buddies, going on my first car date, my first and last days of college (lots of memory gaps in that four-year span), my wedding day, my kids being born and, unfortunately, Sept. 11, 2001. The years are merging into one continuous blur with little snapshots of clarity scattered here and there. A year has been 2.8 percent of my life.

I can only imagine how quickly the years will fly by when I'm 45 and a year totaled only 2.2 percent of my life, 65 (1.5 percent) or 85 (1.2 percent). Perhaps I'll be lucky enough to hit that magical 1.0 percent mark. At that age, with 36,500-plus days' of memories to store, I wonder which days will stand out among them. It's been an interesting ride so far, and I don't expect boredom ever to be a problem.

If I could only remember where I put my keys, I'd really have a jump on things.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@tds.net