DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710240175

SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN             PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: FOCAL POINT 

SOURCE: John Pruitt 

                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

IS OUR FREE TIME A THING OF THE PAST?

How often do you, your neighbors and relatives bemoan whatever happened to free time?

What with visits to a relative in a retirement center or nursing home and other family members helter-skelter all over the map, and with school activities of the kids and all the soccer practices, dance lessons and heaven only knows what else, we're like gerbils on one of those every-spinning wheels.

So much for all the time-saving gadgets that claim every nook and cranny of our homes. So much for stress management.

This came to mind the other day, as I listened to a radio talk show while I drove from Suffolk to Norfolk and while cars and trucks zoomed past me - their drivers supposedly in a rush to get some somewhere to do something else.

Even kids nowadays live their lives in so many time-consuming blocks, one commentator was saying, that creative playtime is a thing of the past.

He recalled the days of visiting friends - planless - and getting into exchanges like this:

What are we going to do?

I don't know. What do you want to do?

No fair, I asked you first.

His theme struck a chord with me, for I've been convinced of that very thing for a long time. While I know idleness can be a path to mischief, I also question involving our children - and ourselves - in so much that everything gets short shrift.

Some of the stories I hear sound more like a taxi service than a family:

Get this one to the soccer field at 9, that one to the doctor at 10:30, then pick up the athlete so he can go home and change clothes so I can deliver him to a party before taking the patient to his aunt's house, in another city, so he can go with her to Virginia Beach.

Pick up the dry cleaning, go to the grocery store, stop by the nursery and get the pansies planted before I have to pick up the party-goer, then perform the volunteer duty I promised six months ago, when this day was a blank on the calendar.

And on it goes, but you get the drift.

Maybe it's just because my motor refuses to run at full speed all the time any more, but I have to ask what enjoyment there possibly can be in going full-tilt from good morning to good night, with no pause for refreshment or reflection.

I've often failed to pause even long enough to question the routine, so count me among the gerbils.

As I sit in a swing in the backyard, where I should be thinking of nothing but simply enjoying the surroundings, for example, I survey the house and think about pending projects, or I cut the swinging short because there just isn't time to waste time; gotta get on to that next block.

It's been a long time since I just sat there, daydreaming as I did when I was a schoolboy - looking out the window to absolutely nowhere, startled when the teacher called on me and asked me where my mind was.

And judging by the full calendars and rushed behavior of others, I'm far from alone.

We get in line at fast-food places and complain that it isn't fast at all. Sometimes, it isn't.

Or we sit in a drive-thru window of a bank and moan that we're burning gas, polluting the air and wasting time we should be spending on something else. Sometimes, we are.

But in the broad scheme of life, what does it matter? It's the same question we need to ask when the motorist in front of us doesn't take off the minute a traffic light changes or when a train blocks our path for a few minutes.

Concluding that it's a badly needed, although unscheduled, a block of free time just might teach our kids too that it's okay if their wheels aren't forever spinning.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu