Time and time again

On this date in 1974 I was a 17 year-old starting my first day of boot camp. For the math impaired that makes me … let’s see … carry the three … old. On June 24, 1974 Tricky Dick Nixon was President of the United States, nobody had a microwave or a cordless phone in their house, there was no such thing as a space shuttle and Keith Richards had just reached middle age.  It was a long time ago.

On the other hand there are still hundreds of 1974 pick-ups on the road, I still wear the pea coat I was issued back then and my buddy is still married to the same woman he married that year. Maybe it wasn’t so long ago.

They say time is relative and I guess that’s true but isn’t time is just time? A day is always 24 hours, an hour is always 60 minutes and the wait at the DMV is always forever. Einstein and other famous smart people have suggested that time can be bent and while I admit that I have no idea what that means but I suspect that my perception of time is a bit bent. I did a little research and it turns out that I was wrong; my perception of time is bent beyond recognition.

Like most people I’ve always associated Cleopatra with mummies, pyramids and, of course, walking like an Egypian. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Cleopatra’s lifespan actually occurred closer in time to the opening of the first Pizza Hut than she was to the building of the pyramids. It’s true! Cleopatra was alive around 30 B.C., the Great Pyramids are estimated to have been built around 2500 B.C. and the first Pizza Hut was built in 1958 so Cleo was around 500 years closer to ordering a pizza than she was to watching ancient aliens build the pyramids. Who knew?

The Great Pyramids of Giza are so old that when the mammoths went extinct around 1650 B.C. the pyramids had already been around for over 1,000 years! No one really knows why all of the mammoths died off but I couldn’t find any evidence to substantiate the rumor that Pizza Hut had anything to do with it. The pyramids are so ancient that they’re among the few things known to pre-date Betty White. We’re talking old!

Stop groaning, I’m kidding! Betty White is one of my heroes but you have to admit she’s been around a while. I would never have guessed this but Betty White is actually older than sliced bread. Ms. White was born in 1922 but pre-sliced bread didn’t hit the market until 1928. It’s just one of the ways that Betty White is cooler than me; I’m older than cell phones, she’s older than sliced bread. How cool is that?

France was still using the guillotine to execute people after Star Wars came out in 1977, only 63 years had passed between the Wright brothers first flight and the first moon landing, there are whales alive today that are adults before Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick and it’s estimated that more than 10% of all photographs ever taken were taken in the last 12 months. Boom…mind blown.

If you’re 30 years old or younger chances are you don’t remember a time before the Simpsons were on TV. In more than 25 years and over 500 episodes, The Simpsons have made the Fox programming executives look like geniuses. Since 1989 when the Simpsons first aired Fox has cancelled over 300 other programs including classics like Herman’s Head and The Return of Jezebel James. Then again they also cancelled Arrested Development and Firefly so maybe they weren’t all that smart.

Some guy named David Eagleman claims that we all live in the past. Eagleman’s theory is that it takes about 80 milliseconds for your brain to perceive what just happened so, in reality, by the time you figure it out it’s already over. I’m not sure I buy all that but I can tell you that living in the past isn’t so bad. I still wear jeans and listen to Pink Floyd…. rock on.

Forty-two years ago today I went to boot camp but now, compared to the Great Pyramids, 200-year-old whales and Betty White, I don’t feel quite so old.  After all, very few people have cordless phones in their homes now either, there’s no space shuttle program these days and Keith Richards is still around. You could sit and think bout this stuff all day but it would just be a waste of … well …time.