We're just trying to keep track of time (02/07/07)

Time, of course, is relative.

As humorist Bill Bryson has noted so well, when you're a kid a single summer afternoon can last forever. Hit middle age and the months fly by so quickly you can't keep track.

You know the feeling - Where did January go? How can it be 2007 already? Didn't we do all that Y2K stuff just a year ago?

Parents know this phenomenon all too well. From a kid's standpoint, it takes eons to grow up and get out of the house. From a parent's, it takes an instant.

Some months move like molasses; welcome to February, the shortest and longest month of the year if you live in Indiana. Some fly by; think June.

Just to complicate this relativity problem, as memories blur a bit, the years merge together. Let's face it, some years seem to disappear entirely from the radar.

Years ago at our house, we started something we call "The Timeline," and it's turned out to be pretty useful. It's a computer file that's occasionally updated - when our memories are fresh - by any member of the family.

It starts with the year that Connie and I met and is updated through 2006. The trivial stuff isn't there - who got what for Christmas - but the big stuff is.

Deaths, births, accomplishments, big family gatherings, vacations, memorable business trips are all included.

We started keeping a record about the time we found ourselves getting confused about precise dates.

On which trip to New England did we go away for an anniversary weekend by ourselves in Maine? What year was it when we first took the twins to King's Island? What plays did we see at the Stratford Festival in 2001? Or did we go to Stratford at all that year?

Does any of that matter? Probably not in the great scheme of things. But the record can settle any number of arguments based on faulty memories, and it's been fun over the years to see what milestones our daughters feel should be recorded in the unofficial family history. It lets us know what they're proud of, what mattered.

So, sure time is relative. An afternoon in the dentist's chair passes far more slowly than all those years your kids spent in elementary school.

But "The Timeline" lets us change that internal calculus a bit, going back to see how many amazing things happened in 1986 or 1978 or just last year. There's something to be said for keeping track.[[In-content Ad]]