Is It Time?

I’m just wondering what time it is.

Last light after picking up a few things at the market, having loaded two full bags into the trunk and slamming it closed, a deadening awareness hit me. I didn’t know what time it was.

I had nowhere specific to go but homeward, the sun was going down (and a lovely sunset it was), I wasn’t particularly tired or frazzled even from the workday and yet I had just locked my keys and phone in the trunk of the car. I stood there in the dark for several moments in solemn disbelief.

No phone = can’t call ANYONE. No “phone home E.T.” No calling a lifeline, no roadside assistance. My car’s bumper isn’t made of metal so I don’t use one of those magnetic hidden key thingeys. Hmmmm. I shopped near work not home so no one I know is within 20 miles. Not even Siri could help me from inside the locked trunk. I walked back into the store.

The edgy girl in customer service with shiny, black lacquered, nine inch nails was busy in conversation about another customer’s amazing calf tattoo. It wasn’t really THAT amazing and it was eventually my turn for assistance. She was dumbfounded that someone had been separated from their iPhone which was more incredulous to her than having locked my keys in the trunk. She allowed me to use the store phone to call for help though. The locksmith who promptly came used all of his tricks and might and repeatedly told me in broken English that my car was as tough to break into as a Lexus. That was cold comfort.

But at last he succeeded. It was only 7:29pm. Not that much time had even elapsed but the experience seemed like an eternity. And by that I don’t really mean time without end rather that sense of a time-suspended reality. Like being weightless out in space. Buzz Aldrin would relate.

But what time is it? Even when we don’t have a timepiece, aka cell phone in hand, we have an internal sense wired into us. So is it time, I ask you? Is it time to take the next step, write the next chapter, say hello to what’s next? I’m running out of time this early Tuesday morning so I must jump to the point. What are you waiting for? Pause and think about it . . . What could you move forward in your life today if you but “took” the time. What could you change or advance for someone else if you took the time?

Maybe it is. Maybe its time.