2. What Happened to "Endless Summers?"

“Sweet childish days, that were as long, as twenty days are now.”
William Wordsworth

You are eight years old. Your eyes flicker open in the late morning to the brilliance of the summer sun streaming through the wide open window. The light warms the side of your face and your skin glistens with moisture from the humid air - no air conditioning to dry it out. But it isn't the sun or the humidity that rouses you, it is the rumble of lawnmowers and the deep green scent of freshly mown grass - the sound and smell of summer.

You fall out bed and head to the kitchen to pour yourself a bowl of cereal, then head out to the couch to voicelessly join your siblings watching cartoons. After breakfast the magic moment occurs: with the front door wide open, the brilliant shafts of the morning sun angle towards you through the screen door lighting up the entryway, beckoning. In the chiaroscuro of those golden rays you see them, those mysterious motes of dust like stars dancing against the black. Beyond the screen door your eyes travel to the driveway, the freshly mown grass, and the possibilities of sidewalks and sprinklers, bikes and forts and friends and candy bars at the corner store.

Summer calls. So you do the only natural thing, you run outside to play, screen door banging behind you. “Make sure you are home for dinner!” your mom shouts and you reply “OK!” without breaking stride. Another endless summer day of long days and short shadows awaits…

I have a vague recollection of the first time I realized that time wasn’t linear. I was 16 and enjoying summer like always before, swimming, hanging out with friends, boating on the lake, riding and racing my bike all with the August summer sun still high in the sky. Then a piece of mail arrived announcing the first day of school a few weeks hence and I remember this intense disturbance. I felt like summer and time itself had been stolen from me. Shadows lengthened school began and sense of nostalgic loss permeated my thoughts. "Where did it go?" I wondered, "what happened to the summers that used to last forever?”

Question: do you remember the first time you realized that time didn’t flow evenly? That, indeed time was accelerating?

(T-15122)