Stories of time growing young and old.

10 lines between a tic

4 hours in a shift

Sand through two slabs of glass-

Not near enough time in a day.

 

—

 

“I’m tired of feeling old.” Margaret was the center piece of women at the Old Tea Room in Eudora. Every Thursday was the same, and she was halfway in the cabaret dress up station at the novelty tea joint. Pointing with a boa towards the ceiling, Margaret was being dramatic.

“If a tree is allowed to count its age by rings then by god, I will count mine by wrinkles, and I have twenty four wrinkles if you were wondering.”

“You missed one.” One of her audience members leaned over.

“What are you talking about, I check every morning.”

“Your mouth!” They were all shrieking with laughter. Margaret was not.

“If you think that is funny, you are so clearly undeveloped. Wrinkles are a sign of maturity, not gained years. Each one of my wrinkles is filled with ideas you wish your feather boa caboose could dream of, and if you say my mouth is one than it’s the smartest of them all!” She took a sip of her tea and pouted out her chin. 

“Say, who’s going to pick up the check this time by the way?” Margaret had been left with it the past three thursdays.

“The girl with the lowest birth date… Margaret?”

Margaret looked down at her watch and smoothed over the feathers with her hand. She took out the money in her pocketbook, ruffled through it and left a coin dated 1931.

What a proud year for a new loud wrinkle to start branching out. 

 

 

—

 

 

Squirt, fold, squirt, fold, squirt, fold “I hate my job.” Jackson was whining in his accidental nasally voice.

“I’m working right next to you, I know you hate your job you tell me every day! I know squirting refried beans from a watery pump isn’t your idea of big bucks or big times, but you’ve been here for two months so either get out or every other squirt should fill your mouth.”  Rick was barely there and concentrated hard on the task underneath him.

“Move down the assembly line?” 

“Uhh, Hello? I’ve been working tortillas for fifteen years, I will not move my position just because you want to exercise your freedom of speech. You are refried beans. I am tortillas. I win by default. Now please, I like pressing tortillas they are easy and I do not need a college degree. I do need hands and you’re lucky I don’t need ears.”

“Well I am younger than you, you know what that means?”

“You still get money from your parents?”

“I will live longer.”

“You call this a life? Squirting beans into a taco shell is one hell of a life.”

Jackson had recently dropped out of college. straining for four years is a decision he reconsiders after 15 squirts. Who knew commercialized mexican food was diluted? The same who know college texts, oratories, and money all too well. Next semester couldn’t come soon enough.

 

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bell rang in medias res of Professor Delone’s lecture and the students choreographed their escape. As the figures in front of him scoffed and dragged up the stairs he put his handkerchief to the sweat droplets surrounding his brow. “Not enough time in the day.” he sighed and joined his thumb and index finger pairing around his mustache. “The time in my two hour class is no time at all. I need countless Mississippi’s, I’ll have to get on that.” Still mumbling he carried his head to his chair and started to sulk. Thoughts exhaled and moved out as his posture got worse.

“Ephemeral class bells, ephemeral students. College is great. Youth is forever.” His voice had become taunting to nobody in the room but himself.

The computer desktop displayed a foggy mountain template on the projector above his head, where his thoughts started drifting.

“Life and beauty are ephemeral, and rarely grown into. My routine is unhappy, my class is lacking, I am lacking; but what?”

Driving to pick his wife up from the tea room he counted the folds in his hands, each one telling a short story worth telling. His wife hurried to the car.

“You won’t believe today! Frank, I’m afraid I’ve grown old.”

“I know dear, isn’t it wonderful?”

“It is fast, all of this, and you get as slow as a slug.”

Science Sunday sounded with the air conditioner.

“You don’t shrivel at salt do you?”

“Ha, me? My cholesterol could wipe those things off the earth.”

“Than be quiet and hold my hand.”

The car accelerated, Margaret let out a shrill laugh and Frank traced the lines of her palm.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

 

On the swings during the day’s second recess Carla pushed her legs forward and felt her stomach bounce for an ounce of a second. Staring over at the eighth graders with their made-up faces she sighed.

“I wish I could be all grown up.” The boy next to her was carefully planning the direction of his feet so that he wouldn’t have to face the embarrassment of swinging the same tempo as her or “getting married”  as the kids say.

“Why’d you like to be like them huh? They are no fun at all.” He was higher than Carla now, and proud of the fact.

“Being a kid is no fun. We can’t walk to the Dairy Queen by ourselves, or walk to school, or even get married or nothing. Being a kid stinks.” Her legs pumping and her mind jumping she stared at the circle of girls and overheard their conversations.”

-“So, did you like hear what Trey said to me? He was like you have the sexiest waistline and I want to take it to prom!”

-”What did you say?”

-”Yes!!”

Giggles and hair-flips and clothing adjustments ensued.

Clara looked at Trey who was higher in the swing seat than before.

“Trey do I have a cute waistline?” 

“I don’t know, I mean you’re okay. You like swings, you eat ice cream with me, we go to the pools in the summer. You are a girl. I am a boy. We are kids. It would confuse me if we were older right now. I mean c’mon don’t you wanna play Harriet the spy for another year before it’s boring?”

“Can we play it now, Trey please please please please please please can we play it? Please? Can my code name be red? Can yours be spider? I’ll go get my Talkgirl. We can make ourselves sound like chipmunks and fat people…Please?”

“Okay, I’ll go get my notepad.”

The two didn’t notice that they were talking face to face, swing to swing, pump to pump.

“Hey Trey?”

“What?”

“We’re married.”

“Nu-uh, too soon!,” and the jumped to the ground and walked towards the pavement.

 

 

— 

 

 

I don’t necessarily believe in time. That was my basis for writing these, but they didn’t turn out the way I expected them to (not in a bad way). I’d much rather count my life with feelings or light or something. It’s so weird because we all have that sort of digital clock changing in our head and sometimes I’ll be counting 1 mississippi 2 mississippi, which is just weird. I guess time is effective for it’s purpose, people aren’t late, unless fashionably. I just can’t seem to feel like time is just a dumb concept stronger than people but I’m probably really wrong, because without time would just be weird. I just hate always seeing 9:32 on the clock all the time. See! you can’t even talk about time without using time in the context of a different sentence in which you aren’t actually referring to time itself. Okay so I wouldn’t have won the prosecution of time case, but time really isn’t real but life sort of is sometimes so I’d rather have a personalized internal clock than a neon-bulb digital alarm clock playing A.M. radio every time I go on a fishing trip with my father. The clock is telling me it’s 12:10 and I should probably get into bed so I can wake up in time for work, work my four hour shift, and then leap back into my rhythm, my tics, and my on the dot 4:00 hiccups. I might tell the hour by the hiccup, but the big hand will be on the 12.

 

 

ByeByeByeBye-Paige