There Just Wasn’t Any Time

Published December 16, 1982. Like most 9-year-olds, our son Jon is very persistent. For two weeks he has been trying to get me to take him target shooting with our .22 rifle. And whenever he has asked, I have had just one reply. I don’t have the time.

Jon knows the first step in getting me to go is to go buy the bullets. So each time I left the house during the past 10 days he asked if I could drop by the sporting goods store and pick up the shells. And each time he asked, I explained to him why I don’t have the time. The semester is ending at the university, and I have many papers to get back and grade. Or, I don’t have the time because I am trying to finish the last chapter on my book. I don’t have the time anyway to go target shooting because there seem to be a million and one jobs around the house I am trying to complete. I don’t have the time because, because, because.

Then this past week an article came across my desk. I really don’t know who wrote it. It is simply signed “Houston, Love Letters.” Anyway, I read it, and it goes as follows:

I Was Going to, But There Wasn’t Time

Time. It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by for the young, and runs out for the aged.

Time. We crave it. We curse it. We kill it. We abuse it. Is it a friend or an enemy?

We know very little about it. To know it at all, to know its potential, perhaps we should view it through a filter called ‘memories.’

When I was young, Mama was going to read me a story and I was going to turn the pages and pretend I could read. But she had to wax the bathroom, and there wasn’t time.

When I was young, Daddy was going to come to school and watch me in a play. I was the fourth Wise Man (in case one of the three got sick), but he was having the car tuned and there was not time.

When I was young, Grandma and Grandpa were going to come for Christmas to see the expression on my face when I got my first bike, but Grandma didn’t know who she could get to feed the dogs and Grandpa didn’t like the cold weather, and besides, they didn’t have the time.

When I was older, Dad and I were going fishing one weekend, just the two of us, and we were going to pitch a tent and fry fish with the heads on them. But at the last minute he had to fertilize the garden and there wasn’t time.

When I was older, the whole family was going to pose together for our Christmas card. But my brother had ball practice and my sister had her hair up; Dad was watching the Colts and Mom had to mop the kitchen. There wasn’t time.

When I grew up and left home to be married, I was going to sit down with Mom and Dad and tell them I loved them and would miss them. But Hank (he was our best man) was honking the horn in front of the house, so there wasn’t time.

Tonight my children want to go out looking at decorations in the shopping malls. I’ve got a meeting to go to. No, my kids are going to have a memory of our shopping mall excursion, and not my meeting.

There must be time to make memories.

I don’t know what it does to you to read something like this. But I will tell you what it did for me.

Friday I went down and bought a box of .22 long-rifle shells.

And Saturday afternoon, Jon and I drove out to the edge of town and went target shooting.