You Just Can't Go Back

Time doesn’t have wings. That would merely enable it to fly. Time has rocket engines and streamlined fins and a nasty habit of getting faster as I grow older. Yesterday I was a young lad chasing and catching a firmly struck cricket ball. Today I’m a middle aged man and that cricket ball would streak to the fence before the command from my brain reached the muscles in my legs. Thankfully, I’m not alone. All the other lads and ladies that formed my circle of friends are in the same temporal boat. Thanks to Middle Bro’s endeavours this boat pulled up at our favourite boyhood park at 4:00pm sharp. Or 4:30. or 5:00. I did say that we are middle aged.

Not everyone made the grand reunion, of course. Tamberhorse prefers the virtual world these days; KS is difficult to track down; several live too far away or were too busy. In the end only Bredo, JC, PL and LT joined Middle Bro and me. Some of us brought our families, or a representative portion thereof. We had a remarkably good day.

It was an evening of nostalgia. The glory days got a thorough working over; I’d like to think that the glasses we used to look back weren’t rose tinted. I could clearly see the young men and women — boys and girls, really — behind the graying hair and the growing paunches. We are a couple of decades older. At least. And we look older but somehow we still looked like we did years ago. The glasses are, perhaps, a little rose tinted.

We laughed.We played. Time flew. And we went our separate ways.

It will probably be another decade before we all meet again.

You just can’t go back.