The digital age has stripped us of an acquired skill that once was a very respected talent. I'm speaking of the lost art of stopping a fast forwarded tape at precisely the right moment. It could be an audio cassette or a VCR tape, but not everyone could master the technique of stopping it at just the right moment. Of course you could always use the counter, but that's about as much fun as doing math, and it took the feel and instinct out of it. Not to brag, but I was pretty good at stopping the fast forward. In those days when you popped in your copy of Poison's "Open Up And Say Ahh...." but you didn't want to listen to "Look But You Can't Touch" and "Fallen Angel", just "Every Rose Has It's Thorn", you didn't have a "skip to the next track button", you had to use the fast forward. After untold hours listening to tapes with songs I didn't like, I learned to listen to the sound of the unspooling tape to tell when a new song was qued up. Growing up I never dreamed this skill would be put to use (beyond a never a achieved dream of being a radio DJ), but it has.
I've always heard the older generation talk about how fast life goes by, but I never could have imagined how fast. I can remember being young and feeling like life was in slow motion. A single hour (especially if it was spent in Mr. Hamlett's Geometry class) could seemingly last for days. My 12 hour shift at the Highway Department before a date that night with Her, seemed like it would never end. Not. Any. More. Eventually (I have a theory that it is when children are born) life switches from pause to fast forward. Looking at some pictures and postings on Facebook recently I realized my life is in fast forward.
Here are a few examples from the past few months: She recently spent two weeks in Wisconsin with her little sister Amber, who was having her first baby. This is the same Amber who, it seems like just yesterday, snarled her 8 year old nose up at me when we met, giving me a "you aren't worthy of my big sister" look. The next thing I know she's a teenager, then a wife and now a mom!
I feel like just yesterday Colby Webb was a bucktoothed, skinny little kid and then one night he shows up to my high school Bible class wearing baggy hip hop clothes and cement stiff six inch blonde spiked hair. Dozens of youth trips went by in a blur and now he's married.
Then there's Clay & Mary Lauren Doggett. I can still see them sitting together for the first time in my VBS high school class. They were just beginning to "date." I don't remember their age, but they are early teenagers, and summer after summer I watched as they grew closer and closer at VBS and Bible camp, until a few years pass and I'm performing their wedding. Today she is a nurse, he is a sheriff deputy (two very grown up jobs) and their son just celebrated his 2nd birthday.
From the same family there is also Leslie and Jake Hamby. I vividly remember the day she came into my Summer Bible school class, ran up to me and enthusiastically shouted, "Look Mr. Brandon I'm wearing makeup" (likely for the first time). Again, I have no idea how old she was, but I know she was young enough that the makeup didn't make her look older, but like a cute little girl playing dress up. Jake was a scrawny little boy that I've known his entire life and taught for many years. We have an album filled with Christmas cards of Jake and his brother and sister from the cradle till college. Last summer I stood in front of the now big strong engineer that Jake has become, as he exchanged vows with Leslie the nurse. Sometime this summer they will welcome their own baby girl.
Even in my own family I can look at a picture of a ten year old me with all of my cousins, as I hold my newborn cousin Erica. When she was in high school she was the first person I baptized. Today she is a school teacher, married, with two children who are older than she was when that picture was taken.
Most recently, I rode back from a soccer game with my old friend and fellow preacher, Keith. Sixteen years ago we began preaching school together. On Monday nights when our wives had class, Keith and I would get together to "study" (watch Monday Night Football) and tag team babysit our three sons. Reese and Benjamin were the same age at the time (two years old) and kept each other occupied, leaving me with just my newborn son Kase (who slept most of the time anyway). Riding back from this soccer game last week, Keith and I sat in the front seat, while our now senior sons, Reese and Benjamin, rode in the back. And that newborn Kase is now a freshman on the same soccer team.
Thankfully, I have a well honed skill of knowing just the right time to hit the button to stop the fast forward and just let it play. If you will excuse me, I need to slow my life down for a few minutes and just enjoy it.
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