I contemplated starting this column in one of the least cool ways in the history of The BG News: with a quote from Hootie and the Blowfish.

It was going to be about something punishing us, leaving you standing there all alone, teaching about tomorrow (and all the pain and sorrow) and a seemingly-out-of-place line about mothers crying in the streets.

Something that has become apparent to me in the last couple of weeks and months (or was it seconds or years?) is what an unforgiving and judgmental, yet completely illuminating thing time is.

I thought about calling it the “ultimate objective observer” but there is nothing objective about time, despite its precise intervals and structure.

For many of you, time is probably something that seems to be in abundance, aside from wishing you had more time to finish that paper. Everybody around you is the same age, relatively, save for professors – but they aren’t real people to you anyway.

The future seems to be endless. Milestones like 25, 30, 40 and retirement aren’t going to happen for an eternity. Turning 21 might even seem like a long ways off too. Likewise, junior high and your fifth birthday party were centuries ago.

Life is just beginning. But once it starts going, it goes fast. And you’ll see Darius Rucker (who was last relevant three presidential terms ago) actually was saying something.

As a grad student who recently crossed into the category of “30-something,” time has been freaking me the heck out recently.

I realized my cultural and life experience is vastly different from so many of the people I spend my days with. And it goes both ways – I am about middle-aged for my program.

Maybe it was over “holiday” break when I watched VH1’s “Top 100 Songs of the 1980s” followed directly by the nineties version. The “top” 1980s song was “Livin’ on a Prayer” from 1987 by Bon Jovi. I was in fifth grade when it came out, roughly 21 years ago. Before maybe half of the campus was born.

I watched a special on Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” That all happened more than half of my life ago. Yes, I apparently gauge my life in terms of pop music.

I could not believe it was that long ago. Time starts to distort after you hit maybe 25.

I realized I am closer to 40 now that I am to 21. That was a really scary realization.

One of my profs last fall always talked to me about the 1960s. Growing up, I always thought the ’60s seemed to be interesting ancient history. Apparently, they were just as close in time to me then as Bon Jovi is now.

He said school years seem to just blow by him now, as he approaches 60.

One of my new classmates is 23, two full high school careers younger than me. She would have been three for the “Livin’ on a Prayer” era. Even two friends who are 26 would have been in eighth grade when I was a senior in high school.

I heard “American Idiot” in a bar downtown recently and could not fathom that we have come to another presidential election already.

A girl, 20, at work had Bush’s “Little Things” as her cell phone ringer. I told her I had seen the band in a bar as a college freshman for $5 when they were first getting famous, and long before Gavin Rossdale became Mr. Gwen Stefani (and actually before anyone even knew of Gwen Stefani). She replied she only knew the band as an oldies group. As a sidenote, she also thought Hillary Clinton was Bill’s daughter and didn’t know who Barack Obama was when I told her I tried to add him as a MySpace friend (still waiting, bud).

Obama was just finishing law school at Harvard when I saw Bush in concert and now he could be our next president.

I also feel ancient as I consider technology. When I was a freshman, I checked my e-mail for the first time. No MySpace or Facebook or online classes. We registered using the phone. I did not know anyone with a cell phone until senior year in college. One guy had a laptop. The world’s knowledge is now doubling every five years.

My younger brother still marvels at what college would have been like without cell phones. There was a whole lot of time spent trying to find people, I can tell you that.

I’m not saying anything revolutionary. Scientists and philosophers have talked about time being relative for eons. Our challenge is to accept it and embrace how fleeting it all is. To chuckle at the passage rather than be freaked out and be comfortable with how we use what we have.

“Tomorrow’s just another day”. And I don’t believe in”.. time.”