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In a Blink of an Eye

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

By Mark Stackpole

When asked to explain his most famous theory, Albert Einstein put it in a way that all of us could understand: "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity." Say no more, Al. Say no more.

I still don't know much about physics, but I am learning more and more about how the passage of time is indeed relative. I guess it makes sense that the fastest hours are the ones I spend with the prettiest girl I have ever seen: my daughter, Corinne. (Let me cover my bases by saying that I actually never saw my wife as a "girl" and currently consider her the prettiest "woman" that I have ever seen.)

I don't think that Dr. Einstein is responsible for "Time flies when you're having fun," but that is pretty much what he is saying. What I have been consistently unprepared for is how much faster it seems to fly now that I have become a father. There is obviously more to being a parent than simply having fun, and let's face it, there is little fun when the baby is screaming her lungs out for reasons that you cannot understand (helloooooo hot stove...) or when the time that evaporates so quickly refers to your nightly hours of uninterrupted sleep (dreaming of pretty girls, no doubt...).

But what can compare to the rather complicated set of feelings that accompanies the awareness that your child can do something at dinner that she could not do at breakfast. Time is not only made manifest in the physical world, but you can also feel its weight upon your shoulders. Oh, and then there's that joy and pride thing that comes from actually watching your baby learn and grow right before your very eyes. Amazing.

Every time I blinked my eyes, my baby girl grew up a little bit. While she is hardly grown up, I can still see that neighborhood from here. And it is certainly a nice neighborhood – I am just not ready to move there just yet. Thus far, the timeline has looked something like this:

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