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As time is a fact of reality which no sane person can deny, I am certain that it is something that we all consider at some point in our lives. There comes a point when one wonders about time and how we, as individuals, fit into it. A time when we wonder a little deeper than how long it takes to drive to work so we can set the alarm clock a few minutes later. When we wonder about more than how much longer until the kids go to bed. There comes a point when we wonder about something a little more involved than how long to cook pasta without overcooking it.

The first two methods of measuring time are based on the daily rotation of the earth on its axis. One is based on the apparent motion of the sun in the sky, which is called solar time. The other is based on the apparent motion of the stars in the sky, which is called sidereal time. A third method is based on the revolution of the earth around the sun, which is called ephemeris time. Albert Einstein went to great lengths to dissect time and categorize all of its relations to reality. Time has become a concept a little more personal to me than the predictability of celestial marvels or Einstein's theories of relativity. It consists of a relatively small chunk in the space-time continuum that I like to call MY TIME.

I was born in 1964, a time of teen revolt, free love and easy spirits. A time of passion, angst and confusion. Of drugs, alcohol and condoned violence. My parents weren't much different than any of the other young people in love during the era known simply as "the sixties". They were caught up in their time.

I was born three months after John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, was brutally murdered before the eyes of his nation and his family. Strangely, I feel as if I remember my mother grieving as I slept in her womb.

I was too young to know that the Vietnam war guided an overwhelming number of circumstances in my life. I had no clue that my people were at war. I climbed trees, drank Kool-Aid and played in the dirt with my brothers' trucks. I didn't know that there was a reason for the people in my family behaving the way they were. A reason for their detachment from reality.

It took something like twelve years after the war before America could look a Vietnam vet in the eye. Our own family members had given their lives and their minds over to the war, and they were shunned, ostracized from community. I don't remember that either, but I do remember that some of my family members did indeed give

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