@JonicaBradley 2 April 2022

Instant Oatmeal-Writing Prompt #27: Time

When my youngest kid was in Kindergarten, we were often in a hurry to get to class in time. On the days when we were short on time, I made them instant oatmeal. Somehow, we ended up calling it Time. As in, “What flavor time do you want today?” I was thinking about time the other day. Mostly recognizing the need to create this construct we humans call time. I was thinking about it in the context of my stopping smoking. I don’t remember the exact day I stopped. I do know it was on a Wednesday. It already feels like it has been years since I’ve stopped. It also, at times (heh), feels like it has only been seconds. Our distorted sense of time often has to do with desire. The desire for something to arrive or something to end. When I was in high school, I graffitied a wall with Time has gone to the bathroom.

I’m not sure anybody but me really knew what I meant. I meant the long-ass “seconds” between each tick of the giant classroom clock. I swear it would stop ticking for at least half an hour. Especially when we were waiting for the bell to ring. The only time that classroom clock went fast was on a timed portion of a pop quiz for which nobody had studied. Or when I asked for a bathroom pass (so I could go smoke). I was able to suck down a cigarette in about 5 minutes before racing back to the classroom. That was when I still cared about getting into trouble. It must’ve been the first semester of my freshman year because I never cared again, after that. I looked forward to Saturday D-Haul because that meant I could go out and party Friday night until school o’clock on Saturday morning. I looked forward to being suspended, usually for 5 days at a time, so I could lay out in the sun wearing baby oil and a bikini smoking, and reading to my heart’s content. Currently, time is dragging and stretching, speeding and slowing. I feel like I missed the first half of 2022 because I was away from home from December 30 to February 24. It felt like I was away for years. It seems to be taking forever to find out if we really do have the house we just bought. We are under contract, but the contract is contingent on the seller finding their own house before the end of this month. At the time of this writing, that leaves us five whole (centuries) days until we know whether we are homeowners or whether we will kill the contract and keep looking. Time is f*cking dragging! I do not want to keep looking for a house. I like the one we chose. I feel like we are running out of time. We have already started packing. My husband wants to move by September. Time is just speeding along. I can’t believe we are already almost into April. Where did time go? I have to admit that while time flew by these past 12 years, it is crawling right now. It is also speeding away as I try to fit everything into 24 hours, 7 days, 20 weeks, or 5 months. Whether speeding or lagging, time has definitely changed me. AND I’m just exactly the same as I ever was. Time may change me But you can't track time - David Bowie https://youtu.be/gw4tcCbf2TE How do you feel about Time? What does time mean to you? Are you running out of time or is time flying by? You can answer these questions and more by joining in on this prompt. Please follow these simple rules: **Join** the Promptly Jonica community here https://read.cash/c/promptlyjonica-b4a0 **Write** anything about **time** Write 100% **original** content Write at least **600 words** for Rusty to be happy **Submit** your article to PromptlyJonica **Tag** me, @JonicaBradley https://read.cash/@JonicaBradley Have **fun!** *All images license-free courtesy of Unsplash* Your sponsorship will keep these writing prompts coming out regularly!