January 19, 2011

• The Friends Conundrum

  Whenever my friends force me to recall my past relationships, what they are really asking is for me to tell them more stories about one particular girl I dated in college.  None of my current friends have ever met this girl, but they’re fascinated by her because for the entire time that we dated, I was seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was a total bitch.  For the entire time that we dated, I never noticed how rude, unhappy, bitter, and petty she was.  As such, they collectively refer to her as “that one bitch.”  They particularly like hearing the story about how she hated the sitcom Friends but never felt the need to stop watching it.  Every Thursday night she and I would watch the show and whenever a comedic moment happened, she would sarcastically yell at the TV, “HAHAHAHA.  THAT’S SO FUNNY.  God this show is so stupid.”  She would continue to pout like that and mock the entire show.  I don’t know why this didn’t bother me at the time.  It wasn’t until years later that I realized, with the help of my friends’ perspective, that she wasn’t very nice.

  In any case, there is one thing that this bitch always said that kind of stuck with me.  Like many women, she was hypercritical about her age.  She liked to lament that, “Time moves as fast as your age,” meaning that the higher your age is the faster your life goes by.  This is probably an overly dramatic problem for a college coed, but I can certainly understand her perspective.  When I was eight years old time seemed to not move at all.  Second grade seemed like it lasted forever, and when summer vacation rolled around it seemed like those three months would never end.  Today I am 33-years-old and time does seem like it is moving more quickly; I’m not even certain that 2010 ever happened.  But I’m not sure if this phenomenon is occurring because I am older or because nothing is changing.  Let me explain.

  On most weekday evenings I can find myself catching an episode of Friends on syndication.  Friends has been off the air for almost seven years, and since that show ran for ten years, I can find myself watching an episode that is anywhere between seven and seventeen years old.  This is an old show, but when I watch it, it doesn’t seem old.  The show has aged remarkably well.  An episode from 1998 still holds up well today in terms of the characters’ hairstyles, wardrobes, and even in terms of their dilemmas and everyday adventures (i.e. hanging out at an overpriced coffee house).  However, in 1998, watching an episode of, say, Growing Pains from 1985 (thirteen years earlier) seemed like watching old time television.  1985 felt aesthetically from another era.  The thirteen year gap between 1985 and 1998 is dramatically larger than that between 1998 and 2011.  From a scientific standpoint, we know that this is physically impossible because time is constant.  What we’re experiencing is that technology is advancing but cultural change is decelerating, which makes it seem like time is passing by more quickly.  Does that make sense?  How the hell should I know?  I’m not Stephen Hawking.

  It’s already midway into the first month of 2011 and I don’t know where all the time has gone.  Everything feels the same.  I’ll be 34 in four months, but will that change anything?  HAHAHAHA THAT’S SO FUNNY.

  • 12:35 pm
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