Published February 10, 2008 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune

A toddler, a truck and the theory of relativity

By Aaron J. Brown

So the other day our son Henry, who is two and a half, picked up a toy truck from the coffee table, examined it carefully and made a simple declaration. “I’ve had this truck a long time.”

We offered the standard parent agreement, “Yes, you have,” while stifling laughter at the irony. He’s 2! Not only did his birth seem to happen yesterday, but I distinctly remember the day that truck came home, too. Grandma and Grandpa brought Henry back from a town trip and he ran over to the coffee table, rolling his new truck back and forth with glee. The joy stemmed partially from the truck, but also from his realization that he now enjoyed full control of his grandparents when they take him to almost any store.

To me, not much has changed since that day. I’m still writing a book that isn’t finished, a phrase that sometimes seems destined to appear in my future obituary rephrased into a mournful past tense. Our schedules remain packed, our twin boys Doug and George eat through Christina’s homemade baby food like raccoons through a restaurant Dumpster and Molly Dog continues to warn us of the looming threat posed by UPS delivery personnel. But that’s my perspective, my “adult” point of view. At the same time, here amid the blue-gray demographics of the Iron Range, some still refer to me as younger than several pairs of their underwear, respectively. I have three children and a mortgage the size of Mothra, but whenever I go to community functions someone always pipes up, “Oh, it’s good to see the youth involved.” I wonder how my perspective will change if and when I reach the golden years. (I tell you what; I’m buying all new underwear at age 62 to avoid this topic entirely).

Albert Einstein once explained the Theory of Relativity this way: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.”

As my age clicks toward 30, I can’t complain much about time yet. Indeed, many of my contemporaries still live in their parent’s basement wondering if any of these so-called “jobs” involve PlayStation. But a message in a Christmas card this year really hit home. Every year passes more quickly than the year before, my uncle warned. And it’s true. Last summer my wife gave birth to the twins after Henry turned two and began talking in complete sentences. And then it was Christmas. Using Einstein’s theory we’ll be putting up the decorations for Christmas ’08 sometime next week and then, the home.

I wonder about the time I burned back when it passed like a stone. During summer vacations when I was 14 and 15, not yet old enough to drive or get a job, I whiled away the hot Iron Range nights in the basement where it was cool, eating peanut butter toast and sleeping on a ratty cot in front of an old color TV that got all four broadcast channels. I would stay up until all four networks signed off. After that, at 3 or 4 in the morning, I sometimes wandered bare foot outside in grass already wet with dew looking for the stars and planets from a late night astronomy show that had just ended. Every few weeks the Northern Lights would arch above the tree line, over my dad’s giant steel workshop, almost reaching the spot directly over our yard. I would go back inside, sleep until noon or 1 in the afternoon. Then I’d go for a 15 mile bike ride to visit friends, eat dinner and do the same thing all over again for three months. Today it feels like one tiny second in my life but I don’t recall believing those summers would ever end.

Years later, our second floor apartment hovered in the 80 degree range all year round. Christina had to work weekend evenings, so I would spend hours playing computer games until 10, when I had a standing date to watch Rocky and Bullwinkle until she came home at 11. I was 20, an age many believe to be the prime of a man’s life. This time, too, passed slowly. But with each accomplishment – a better job, a house, a better house, finally children – time accelerated. Today each day feels like a blink, but leaves behind hundreds of memories; so many that they can’t all be realized as they happen. Sometimes I think I wasted those early years. How many books could I have written, languages could I have learned? How much could I have learned about Gandhi or the Whiskey Rebellion that I currently do not know? But then again, in the life of a toddler six months spent with a really good toy truck is a long time, a good long time.

That’s relativity.

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