Waiting by Bonnie Le Hamilton

In, I believe its Harry Potter Goblet of Fire, J K Rowling writes something about how time plays tricks on people. When we’re looking forward to something, time tends to slow down, dragging its feet, and when we’re not looking forward to something it speeds up, bringing the event you don’t want to happen up faster than you would have liked.

And I really hate that isn’t fiction, its fact.

You see I’ve been counting down to this Friday for it feels likes months, and during that time there have been a few events I wasn’t looking forward as well, that did come and go really fast, but this coming Friday is taking its own sweet time in getting here.

Now technically, I know that time passes at the same rate day by day, we all know that, but it doesn’t feel that way when you’re anxious for the ensuing days to pass so the waited for event can occur. And I wonder how many of us, beside Rowling, have ever used this effect in our stories.

We know it happens. We’ve experienced it often enough ourselves. I’m sure lots of children know the feeling of looking forward to Christmas but hate the idea of that trip to the dentist. And we all know that dreaded trip is always upon us way faster than we would like while Christmas takes its own sweet time arriving. It happens every time.

At the beginning of this month, I wasn’t looking forward to my father-in-law dying. Intelligently I knew it was coming, he was fading fast, but it is always hard to watch a loved one go. I didn’t want him to go just yet neither did anyone else in the family. We wanted more time however the clock had other plans.

Before long, I was attending his funeral.

But while I wasn’t looking forward to his death, I was looking forward to this Friday, and it seems to me that time is really dragging its feet!

You see, Konnie’s and my birthday is coming up, and some time ago we discussing how nice it would be to be able to be together on our birthday. She even suggested I make another trek down to her place.

I told her flat out I wasn’t ever going to go down to Vegas during the summer, not if I could help it anyway. She insisted she couldn’t afford to come up to Pocatello, and I could afford the trip to Vegas, which I could, but I decided the solution was for me to pay for her plane fair.

Anyway, this Friday morning I’ll be heading to I.F. for the airport to pick up Konnie, and we’ll have a couple of kids and menagerie free weeks to spend together, well aside from Konnie will have her phone, but still, it should be fun for my friends to finally see for themselves just how alike we are.

And sometime I should try writing a scene where the character feels that time is playing tricks on him, might be interesting.

What do you think?

Happy writing everyone. J