Can you believe it’s almost Halloween?

This isn’t an unusual comment for me, the road from school’s start to CANDYFEST usually runs 100mph in my world. What is unusual is that my kids have stepped over some imaginary line into the “time flies” world with me.

When they were littles and we’d remark on how fast the year was going we’d get moans and groans and despair because Halloween is never gonna get here and why can’t it be Christmas already and the such. After a while I just kind of got used to it – for me there weren’t enough hours in the day, for them every day felt like being trapped in a stuffy library with only Moby Dick to pass the time.

But lately? Lately my kids say things like I can’t believe how fast this year’s going! and Before you know it we’ll be on Christmas break! These are usually uttered with a wide eyed gaze and incredulity that rivals winning the billion dollar jackpot.

BrightSide recently explained Einstein’s Theory of Relativity – or maybe not, maybe it was some other scientific theory, but seeing as this is stream of consciousness and it’s the middle of a workday I’m not gonna call him for clarification – as a way to help the kids understand why their concept of time shifted. A pretty crummy summary would be a Little hasn’t lived very long so the concept of one year of their life seems like forever, but to a teen a year seems to fly because they have a longer frame of reference. (His explanation was much more eloquent, trust me.) I think they got it but maybe didn’t quite believe it, if you know what I mean. The proof is in the pudding and all that jazz.

In some ways I’ve flipped to the can’t side now. I can’t believe these kids are so grown, I can’t believe they feel like time’s flying, I can’t I can’t I can’t.

Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is: “can.” Use it any way you like. Bonus points if you start and/or finish your post with it. Which means I’ve got double bonus points if you include word-within-a-word rules. Woo hoo!