Gone is the baby-smooth face that smiles at you from my column space. My youthful locks that once flew freely in the wind are no more; their fate was the trash, swept up unceremoniously from the floor. Gone is the sand box, gone is "The Sandlot," gone is childhood.
That is enough melancholy poetic prose for one column, but face and space rhyme so I had to do it. My apologies. Now, on with Sexual Chocolate.
An all-too-short Winter Break proved to be a time of rebirth into adulthood. I, for instance, with shorter hair and the beard that I model after my rabbi, my father (Grandma Faye would be proud), and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Grandma Faye would be a bit less proud), have shed the Keith Partridge look.
Worldly juniors have returned from abroad able to discern between Franzia from a cardboard box in Kroger and a Chianti from Tuscany.
Argyle print and sweater vests are everywhere, a few blondes have returned looking five years older as brunettes and I am pretty sure I saw a student sitting on a bench feeding ducks in the pond in the Duke Gardens.
Indeed, there appears to be a trend: youth is out, age is in. This makes sense considering the manner in which we perceive time. Consider the theory of French philosopher Paul Janet (although to be honest, I heard it from a friend... I will not feign that level of erudition): As time passes, every one second is a decreasingly significant percentage of our total lives. Five years to a five-year-old is a lifetime, but five years to a seventy-year-old is only a moment in the grand scheme of their life.
New experiences become less and less common as we fall into routine. Time congeals; the average day becomes less unique, contributing to the seemingly increasing pace of time's passage.
Remember that summer that you thought would last forever between fifth and sixth grade? That was only a fleeting instant. We no longer think in days, weeks or months, but in years.
We, Francis Ford Coppola would say, are youths without youth-something akin to reverse Gary Colemans. Can we get some "Matlock" showing on the Bryan Center TVs and some Metamucil and prunes at the Great Hall?
Our newfound maturity, our graceful entry into our early-onset golden years suits us. Waiters could confuse us for 21, older women may try to holler and, since Confucius had a beard and Confucius is wisdom personified, by the transitive property, my new beard makes me wiser. Life is sweet with the benefits of age without the actual age. We can feel free to use the word "whippersnapper" but we don't have to worry (yet) about the state of Social Security or our trick knees acting up.
Perhaps we are not "acting our age" when we think of time linearly-when one year is just one year no matter our age. But if time really is relative, if a year at age 60 seems like an eternity for a five-year-old, then it is an opportune time to get ready for life to rush by us. Besides, I'm feeling the sweater vests and argyle, and word on the street is that my beard is a bit sexy in a Ulysses S. Grant kind of way (which, of course, is really really sexy).
There is no resisting time, no need to hold on to ephemeral youth. Maybe it is premature to get dentures fitted, but with age approaching ever more quickly, it is never too early to get started. Think of it this way, you get started playing bridge now, you will run the table when you move into retirement community for active seniors.
Jordan Rice is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Friday.
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