"WITHOUT TIME AND WITHOUT END..."

I was gently brushing the dust from one of my classic collectables earlier today, when something occurred to me.  I had originally owned this particular item back in 1967 or '68, but the one I currently have is a replacement I obtained in the mid-'80s. I probably owned the original for no more than two or three years at the most, while its present-day stand-in I've now had for around 27 years.  Strange, because it still feels like a fairly recent acquisition, while the one I had as a kid seems to have been part of my childhood for far longer than it actually was.

It's the same with comics.  I remember buying the first issue of the 'new' SMASH! in March of 1969, but before the week was out I'd sold it (along with its free gift) at cover price to one of my classmates, BILLY MONTGOMERY, who'd missed out on buying his own copy earlier.  I sold it to him mid-week, intending to buy a replacement before issue #2 came out on the coming Saturday.  As it happens, I didn't manage to obtain one 'til over 15 and a half years later (October 13th, 1984, from an Edinburgh comics shop, to be exact), but I remembered practically every page as if I'd seen it only the day before.

Amazing, isn't it?  I'd only owned the original comic for three or four days at the very most, yet it had made such an enormous impression on me that when I think back, it seems that I had it for far longer.  And, just like the previous item to which I referred, those few days don't seem any less than the nearly 28 years I've owned its successor.

Which brings me closer to the point.  "Hurrah!", cry countless thousands of rabid readers. (If only.)  I was listening to a radio play a number of years back, in which someone quoted a line very close to the following one: "The memories of childhood are without time and without end."  Or it may've been "...without end and without time."  (I've tried to trace its source, but to no avail so if anybody knows its origin, feel free to let me know.)

Regardless of the exact wording, I know exactly what it means.  When I recall my childhood, it's often difficult to remember events in their proper sequence, or the exact duration of certain periods of time.  Whether I had a comic or toy for six days or six months, it all seems the same to me in retrospect.  Same goes for houses.  As a child, I once lived in a house for just over a year, but when I think back on it, my time there doesn't seem any less than the four years I spent in the house before, or the nearly seven years in the one after.  Don't get me wrong - I know there's a difference - I just don't feel there's a difference.

According to the Good Book, "One day is as a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years as one day."  When I think back to the days of my youth, I kind of know what that must feel like - though obviously on a much smaller scale.

"Without time and without end" - if only life itself were like that.  Wouldn't it be great?