The news of my 20 year high school reunion back on Monday got me to thinking about how we perceive time differently as we age. Then I remembered the song Time by Pink Floyd, 4th cut on Dark Side of the Moon, is about that very topic.

Read the lyrics and think about them. If you’re nearing 40 like me, this song probably means something very different for you now than it did when you were much younger.

Time
(Mason, Waters, Wright, Gilmour)

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun,
but it’s sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has gone, the song is over,
thought I’d something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

Today I received word that my 20 year high school reunion is scheduled for Nov. 1st. Certainly it isn’t that time already. There is no way 20 freaking years could have passed since I graduated high school, right? I don’t feel 20 years older than I did back then. I can bring the school, the friends, the feelings, the routine into such crystal clear focus in my mind that it can’t possibly be 20 years ago. It seems simultaneously impossible and deeply shocking that it happened so quickly.

Our perception of time speeds up as we age, the years feel progressively shorter as they tick away. As a consequence, adolescence plays out in an epic high definition sweep, and everything afterward begins to blur. For me, it became noticeable around the time I turned 30 years old. That was back in 2000. Y2K, the big computer panic, the new millennium. Up to that point things seemed to be moving along at a rather orderly pace, and then– woosh. 8 1/2 years have passed in the blink of an eye. The football seasons come and go, birthdays, anniversaries, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, spring, summer, fall, winter like the spaces on a big roulette wheel, spinning round and around.

I don’t think nostalgia is the right word to describe how I feel about my high school years. Nostalgia is a longing for the past, the idealized past. Thinking back, I like to believe I knew how good I had it. I was extremely lucky to have the friends, the relationships and environment I did in high school. Okay, maybe there is a bit of idealization going on with the relationship part, I’m heavily discounting some legendary fights and meltdowns. But on the whole, it was an amazingly good 4 years of my life.

With the reunion coming up, I can’t help but wonder how my old friends view those times we spent together. For instance, I wonder if Mark McCormick remembers the night before our last day of school. We stayed up until 2:00am cramming for Gordon’s Physics 2 final exam the next day. As we were studying, I remember telling Mark that this was it– this was the last time we would ever have to cram for a final in high school, the last test, the last day. What I failed to realize at the time was how poignant a memory it would become, such a simple thing as studying for a test with a friend.