Have you ever noticed how quickly life passes you by? At the moment, you don’t notice at all, but that’s the reason you don’t notice; you’re living in the moment, not wasting brain power on reflecting on the passage of time. I know I’m still young, but I can’t help but notice how quickly life is speeding past me without so much as a “how do you do?”.

A cool fact (I believe everyone should learn at least one new thing every day): Do you know how, when you’re at school and you glance at that clock on the wall to see when class ends, it seems like the first stroke second-hand that you see is longer than the ones that follow? Well, you don’t imagine that. What happens is that when you shift you eyes from the teacher (or whatever/whoever you’re looking at) to the clock, your brain doesn’t process those images in between the first object (teacher) to the second (clock); instead, it replaces those in between images with the final image.

Do you realize what this means? It literally means for that 1/30 or more of a second when your eyes are moving, you do not know what is happening in between? And we move our eyes constantly, even when we think they’re keeping still. So for every time you move your eyes, you lose that 1/30 of your life, never knowing what happened in that space of a second. I mean sure, you have a pretty good idea, but still. And that’s why sometimes you miss what’s happening right in front of you. All those 1/30s of a second add up to maybe 3 seconds a day or more. 3 seconds a day times 7 = 21 seconds in a week. 21 seconds a week times 52 weeks = 1092 seconds a year, or 18 minutes a year. 18 minutes a year times the average lifespan of 80 years = 1456 minutes in your lifetime. For 1456 minutes of your life, you have no clue what you saw. Mind-blowing, isn’t it? Life literally passing you by.

But back to my topic; I’m getting old. Seriously. I’m a SENIOR. I am approaching the age where the only way I can remain in Girl Scouts (Don’t laugh!) is if I become an adult Girl Scout. It seems like adulthood is sneaking up on me, and I have no way of stopping it. As the days pass, more and more responsibilities seem to heap up on my shoulders, quite literally in some cases.

For instance, apparently my parents think me responsible (ha. ha.) enough to stay home alone with the kids for an ENTIRE WEEKEND while they take Nathan (my brother) to college in Tennessee. I mean, sure, I appreciate (quite a lot) the trust that my parents seem to have invested in me. If you knew my parents (especially my dad), this would astonish you too. My dad is like one of those dads who, when a boy walks through the door – even if it’s my brother’s friend – will take him to see his gun collection, and then teach him exactly what the terms “chivalry” and “respect” mean. Quite funny, actually. When the boy gets back from his little “chat” with my dad, he’s usually either white as a sheet or he keeps a big distance between me and him. It never fails to amuse.

I don’t want to grow up, because I realize that I only have one childhood, and that’s gone in a flash. No more daddy picking me up out of the dirt to inspect my torn-up knee (I was an adventurous child. If you’ve ever seen my knees, you’ll see the very impressive scars I have there.), no more mom asking me to brush her hair (I love it when someone brushes my hair, too!). Instead I’ll have BILLS to pay, a dorm or apartments to clean, and groceries to buy (and heaven forbid that I have to cook EVERY meal I want to eat!). Don’t get me wrong, I’m really excited about all this stuff. Still, it’s a bit hard to let go. Call me a daddy’s girl, but I already know that I am 🙂

A bit of a deep discussion, but I tend to do that sometimes. I’m deep like that. (On a completely random tangent…OH MY GOSH I JUST FOUND ANOTHER MOSQUITO BITE ON ME! I think my blood must be sweet or something.)

So yea, go get off the computer and do something with your life!