The village kids sometimes sneak across the field and throw rocks at my garden crow. It’s the sort of thing I used to do as a kid, so I usually watch them from the kitchen window for a few minutes before stepping out to chase them off.
“Hey! You kids get out of here! And stay out!”
Kids are almost always lousy shots with rocks, which is probably what makes it fun. You can burn a lot of time, throwing rocks at a rusty old garden crow. It doesn’t actually matter if you hit it or not, although the sound of the rock connecting with the hollow metal body is exciting. But being a kid is mostly about burning time. Everything the kid does is slanted towards the next minute, and the moment it isn’t, boredom sets in. For an adult, there is sometimes nothing quite as irritating as a bored kid.
But the truth is, kids are just better at time then adults. Call it more sensitive, or more in tune, or whatever you want, but a kid just feels time differently then an adult. You might say that a kid’s palate is more sensitive when it comes to time. They detect tastes and variances that will later go unnoticed in life, and hear things in time that I’m almost positive most adults’ ears have long since lost the ability to hear. For the kid and the adult, time could not be any more different. I sometimes imagine time as the wind, blowing in the face of the kid, frustrating him as it holds him back, yet missed the moment it stops. Kids love the struggle, clinging to that moment of birth for as long as they can, yet wanting at the same time to put as much distance as they can between then and now.
Adults, on the other hand, almost always feel time as a wind at their back, pushing them along faster then they’d like. The adult is constantly trying to plant their feet and hold still, even if it’s for just a moment. We can turn and look back, feeling that wind in our face and imagine what it was like all those years ago, but with our feet slowly sliding in the opposite direction, it just isn’t the same.
Maybe that’s why I don’t mind those village kids sneaking over once in awhile to throw rocks at my garden crow. Watching those rocks miss their mark, I can somehow remember my own struggle a little better. It almost feels like I’m there, with them, chunking rocks at the old man’s stupid garden crow. And even when I burst out the door, roaring at them with my pretend anger, it feels good to be part of it all. The sight of their small heads, disappearing into the tall grass. The sound of their laughter as bits of it catch in the wind and blow back to me in spurts. Maybe I like chasing those kids off because for that moment the wind feels good in my face and time doesn’t feel like such an adversary. For that brief moment, as I stand there on the step, the screen door held open in my hand, and watch the kids pop out of the grass into the clearing that circles the village, it doesn’t matter one bit that they have already forgotten all about me. In that one, brief moment, I feel okay with time, and can almost close my eyes, happy. For that one moment, it almost feels like my feet are no longer sliding along the ground, but stopped and rested, planted in place for the first time ever.
I know when I turn and go inside it will all start again, just as I know that it never really stopped. But it was good to feel it, even if it was for only a moment. And then there is always tomorrow to look forward to. The kids will be back, throwing more rocks. My garden crow will see to that.