Do you remember when you were young and time expanded and the days were longer?

The last week before Christmas took forever! And the last week of school before the holidays dragged out to eternity. I can still see the round black clock on the classroom wall. That hour hand sometimes took half a day to go from 2 to 3. And then the blessed bell would ring and we were free at last!!!!!!!

Time expands when you travel as well. It’s like when you were a kid. I’ve been wondering why that is. Maybe because everything is new again. So much of what you normally block out since you’ve seen it a thousand times in your day to day existence suddenly isn’t there. Everything is different.

You cross over a border and the people are different, the money is different, the food is different. You have to pay attention to a whole new set of rules. Even in countries that speak the same language the words are different, the accent is different, the slang is different.

Now that I think about it maybe that is what I enjoy about living a nomadic life. It keeps you on your toes. Even here in the United States where I am sitting typing this you would think that it is one large country. And it is on the one hand. But Texas is not the same as Maine or Arizona.

You don’t find roadside stands in Texas serving lobster sandwiches. And I never saw Texas barbeque joints in Maine. Not to mention great Mexican food. In the northern plains where I come from there is no decent Mexican food anywhere. In Texas I got an excellent breakfast burrito from a junk truck parked in the parking lot at a Home Depot home improvement center. And it can be hard for a Texan and Mainer to carry on a conversation since their version of English is quite different

You would think that English is the common language of the United States. Well sort of. But when riding the tail of the dragon in North Carolina and stopping for gas, the store keepers might ask, “Wayull, whayr yawl frum?” If you’re from Nebraska you might have to say pardon me and have them repeat the question.

Even in New Zealand where you’ve read in books that they speak English you might be surprised when you stop in the southern mountains outside Dunedin where the Scots settled and they speak Kiwi English with Scottish overtones. I went into a little grocery store which they call dairies down there. The lady said, “tis a bit weet outside.” I stared blankly. It was raining cats and dogs outside and I finally realized that she was saying it was wet outside. Yes, yes it was.