Do you ever wish you could stop time, that ever-running, ever-stalking adversary in your life? Yet perhaps it is not an adversary, but a sage old friend, who teaches you many lessons.
Cowboy Out East
Jim, a 12 year-old cowboy from Arizona, visits his Uncle Charles back East. At first, he preoccupies himself with entertaining his cousins with his lasso tricks, but soon grows tired of it.One day, the local butcher asks Jim to take his horse out to pasture. Jim is thrilled, for he has been longing to ride a horse! Reaching the country roads, Jim urges the butcher’s horse into a gallop. Enjoying this freedom so much, Jim enters a large field to gallop and sling his lasso around.
Jim yells and whoops through the field until his lasso suddenly catches on something. Though he sees nothing, he hears a voice yelling, “Here, let go! Let go, I say! Can’t you see what you’ve done?”
Allotted Time
Father Time asks Jim to reconsider what he has done. “I don’t suppose you want to make an end of all business and pleasure, and war and love, and misery and ambition and everything else, do you?” Ignoring Time’s pleading, Jim pulls him onto the back of his horse and heads into town.An incredible sight awaits Jim, for Jim finds everyone and everything in town frozen in time. He sees an incredible opportunity to do some mischief. After tying Father Time to a post and helping himself to his uncle’s pie, Jim explores the town to engage in some impish fun.
His first joke is on the grocer, who scolded him earlier; he opens the faucet on the molasses barrel in the back of the shop. Then, seeing the “meanest man in town” in the barber shop, Jim grabs some mucilage from a shop and pours it onto the mean man’s head.
To finish up his fun, Jim enters the school and writes a mischievous note on the board behind the teacher and switches the hats of policeman Mulligan and Miss Scrapple (the town gossip), placing the police coat on her shoulders. Finally done, he releases Father Time and the town comes back to life.
Despite the seeming benefits of possessing Father Time, Baum shows that Time is necessary, for, without it, life would be boring, predictable, and inhuman. You must not wish Time to stop, for it makes life interesting.
Baum demonstrates in this story what J.R.R. Tolkien writes in “The Fellowship of the Ring”: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” You have your allotted time, but you also have it to learn from sorrow and hardship, experience love unconditionally, and find adventure.
The next time you look at a clock or see another setting sun, smile. Time has been given to you with its variety of excitement and adventure. Who knows? You might find that you grow more, love more, and laugh more when you allow Time to move forward.
