In 1983, the trailer for the Kennedy mini-series was introduced with the line, ‘Was it really 20 years ago…?’ I can’t find the trailer with that hook, but it’s always stuck in my mind. The gravelly voice, introducing the gravest of moments in history. At the time, to me, 20 years seemed to be closely related to infinity. The sort of period of time where universes could be born and die. I was 10 years of age, so JFK’s assassination was in fact just a mere two lifetimes ago.
I’ve been thinking about the passage of time this week. I have concluded that 20 years is the point where events start to become ‘history’. The dust has settled. The evidence is in. Importantly, most of the adult participants are still alive and sentient and their testimony more objective and less emotional than it might have been a decade earlier. That’s my theory, anyway.
I’ve seen major events of my lifetime enter the annals of history. I still hear the gravelly voice from the Kennedy trailer when it’s a 20th anniversary of something. Which today happens to be the 20th anniversary of my arrival in Mexico City. But I feel I can’t in good faith use the line from that trailer for this. That’s plagiarism. So, I should simply ask, ‘Was it really 7,305 days ago?’
Spoiler alert: yes, it was.
The Mexile 
I’m glad you went. I started with you to get your take on Latin American culture and now a get a bit of southern England’s beat. I’ve enjoyed your writing.
On years: We live a long time, yet it seems but a blur when we look back on it all. One of my first ‘old man’ friends fought in the Spanish American war, my newly printed niece will finish undergraduate school in 2047-we live a long time, I may well see that event. Not likely but it is a reasonable thought.
I tend to measure time by the trees I’ve planted-I’ve got some big ones. And well yes, my kids, they are all into middle age now; how did that happen?
The best thing out of the Mexican sojourn was P, you’re a lucky guy.
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Time is a mind boggling concept. I remember being amazed at the idea that, at age 33, if time had gone backwards from my birth the year would have been 1939 and WW2 not quite yet begun. Those sort of comparisons kinda give context to time, history and the folk who are a bit older than me.
When I was a kid, folk in their late 40s would have likely fought in WW2. And the wrinkly old ladies I was forced to kiss would have remembered WW1. Madness.
My reporting from Mexico returns briefly next month…. 🙂
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I have you beat, Gary. It was 52 years ago that I first traveled to Mexico as a student at the University of the Americas in Cholula. Gosh, I’m old!
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I’m afraid you are old William, there’s no way to pretend otherwise! 🙂
But it sounds like it was all time well spent.
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Yes, and hopefully, I have at least another decade of good years left in me. 🙂
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I’m backing you….!!
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