The other day I passed a bulletin board beside my grandson’s classroom. It had questions about Thanksgiving with fill in the blank spaces. I stopped to read their responses. What caught my eye was the question, “How long do you cook the turkey?” One child said 8 minutes, another said 90 hours. There were many in between. I thought about how time lands on children.

What’s with this thing called time? I’ve been pondering this since I wrote about the way children find time to go more slowly than for adults. Based on the 90 hours answers I thought, perhaps I am wrong.

We have many expressions regarding time that pop into my mind.

Here are a few:

Save time

Make time

Be on time

Run out of time

Ahead of one’s time

Behind the times

Bide your time

Use your time wisely

When time stands still

Time flies

Oh, and you can date me with the Rolling Stones; “Time, it’s on my side”.

You get where I’m going.

Time appears to be all over the map of our lives in confusing and sometimes unproductive ways.

We often think of time as linear. Marching forward, always forward. Yet, I’ve been thinking lately of time as circular.

Over the years I have found we come around to relearn lessons, re-experience similar situations in order to learn and grow. Time seems to loop back on itself. The feeling of “I’ve been here before.”

Ask your children their thoughts on time. It may be enlightening. At the very least, fun.