Killing Time

Once in a while, a truck driver will happen in to the leather store here and I’ll offer my standard greeting, “Hello! Can I help you find something?”

“Naw,” he’ll say, “I’m just killing time.”

The poor man. All he’s got to do with his time is kill it.

Don’t get me wrong. I spend plenty of my time in idleness. Lately, since the weather has been cooler, I often find myself reclined on the deck in back of our house.

I tell Laura, “I can’t get up. These cats are holding me down.”

Yesterday for a while I had three of the little guys on me, preventing me from profitably spending my time. Do the cats like me that much? No. It’s just that I’m a few degrees warmer than the floor. The cats are killing time just like I am.

A railroader kills his time

A good friend of mine works for the railroad. He conducts freight trains that travel across southern Wyoming.

My friend often ends up with a layover at Green River or Rawlins. I asked him one time what he does with that layover time.

In answer, he held up his hands and twiddled his thumbs together.

It’s true, one can only read for so long. One can only go for so many walks, or take so many naps. One can only watch television for so long.

We end up killing time.

Stopped in commuter traffic? You’re killing time. Watching television? You’re certainly killing time. Sitting under a blanket with the cats? Same answer.

The countdown

I remember it well, circa 1959 or 1960. There would be 10 or 12 items on the weekly bulletin at the good old Methodist Church in Brighton. Each item would be numbered, 1., 2., 3., down the left column.

The little snot that I was, impatiently sitting through church services, I would mark each item off one-by-one with a pencil, relieved when each had been cleared from the agenda, eager to be done with church for the day. Especially the sermon. Yipes, the sermon.

Truth be known, I was killing time. I was sitting straight up in church, eyes wide open, killing time. Of course I realize now, the time would have passed much faster for me if I had taken an interest in what was going on.

(In my defense, this was the Methodist Church, which is painfully austere liturgically. Boring, even.)

Hacky Sack and other games

When I pass by a group of baggy-pants hats-sideways boys out on a sidewalk playing Hacky Sack, what do I think?

I think, “Those boys are just killing time is all.”

All right, if I stop in at the Senior Center and a group of high-pants guys is gathered around a pool table playing Eight Ball, what do I think?

“Those guys are just killing time is all.”

Likewise golf. Now here is the king of all activities which humans use to kill time. A biker friend once defined golf for me:

“It’s an avocation for persons who feel an overwhelming urge to participate in something that is demonstrably useless.”

For that matter, riding a motorcycle is demonstrably useless. Spiritual, yes. Fun, yes. But it’s killing time is all.

Smoking cigarettes

In the old days in the newspaper business, I would smoke cigarettes while working at my keyboard. I couldn’t do that nowadays, social schism being what it is.

So if I was still a smoker, I would have to go outside and kill time while I served my addiction. You know what is really, really demonstrably useless? Riding a Harley to the cigarette store to buy cigarettes. I see it every day.

Hospital stays

We’ve watched people at hospitals and at assisted care facilities. Some dutifully watch the provided television sets. Among this group are sometimes found grouches who become resentful when their time-killing viewing pleasure is interrupted.

Others are quite eager to turn down or turn off the set when we come in. Somehow, praying with us, or receiving Holy Communion, is preferable to “killing time.” Imagine that.

Laura and I don’t even own a television set, so we aren’t in that strata. But would I watch TV if I was hospitalized? I might – for a while.

We have noticed that when we visit The Springs Motel in Rock Springs once every two years, the cable is still playing the same tired movies and serial whodunnits.

So there’s only so much “new” to be watched. Even “the news” isn’t that different, year to year. Different perpetrators, is all.

An afternoon in jail

Once upon a time in the dim and distant past, I spent an afternoon in jail, found guilty by the police of the crime of having a flat tire on a motorcycle.

Really my arrest is a story for another time; the point here is, I wasn’t “killing time” in the holding cell. I was doing what lots of people do in other situations, simply enduring for the duration.

There are things which require endurance. Sitting in the dentist’s chair would be one. Playing Bridge with my parents would be another. Getting a haircut, riding a Greyhound bus from Idaho to Salt Lake . . . . you get the picture. Endurance is different than “killing time.”

Then I wonder . . .

There are examples of people who just don’t kill time.

Having carefully studied the collected works of painter Salvador Dali, I propose that he was one guy who never “killed” any of his own time.

The volume and breadth of his work would indicate he wasted little of that precious commodity with which he was gifted -- time. He couldn’t have done that much work without a daily commitment of many hours. It’s just not humanly possible.

So what are the rest of us doing? Not as much as Señor Dali, are we? What’s the difference? What passion made Salvador behave differently than so many of us?

Did I have that passion at one time? Did you? What happened to it? Can I ever get it back? Or am I doomed to a life of Hacky Sack?

(It will have to be Hacky Sack if I suddenly find a driving need to do something utterly useless. I’ve long since thoroughly alienated anyone who might ever have played golf with me.)

If you and I don’t change, we will end up killing all of our time. I don’t like the sound of that.

-0-

Word of the week: Charism. My old dictionary has this only as “charismatic.” O.K., so we’ll go with charismatic and extrapolate “charism.” Charismatic comes from the Greek, “charisma,” or divine gift.

A charismatic is someone who supposedly has some divinely inspired power, as the ability to prophesy or heal or perform miracles. A charism, then, would be the noun naming that person’s ability.

Next week’s word: Eponymous.

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