I'm at the stop light, talking to my best friend Lucy on my new cell phone. She's explaining to me how her son, Zach, has ended up in the Emergency Room. Two weeks into the new school year, and he has already made a friend just as wild as he is. A stab of jealousy pierces me as I wish I could make friends that quick. "Zach and his partner in crime Addison just decided that the really tall slide isn't that scary to jump off of. Well, Addison has a broken arm, and Zach landed on him so all he got was a severely sprained ankle." There's a pause on the other end. "Hey, Kat, I have to go."

"Bye," I say, and press the red end button. The light turns green and I press on the gas. As the world passes by me, my mind starts to ponder'¦

...Time. The evilest of all villains. The more I think on it, the more I realize that time is the one thing that affects everyone, and no one can do anything to stop it. Time can be merciful and bring us happiness, such as a birthday or a day with just that perfect someone. But time, and in most opinions, also brings tragedy, like when the doctor tells his patient that he has three months to live. That's three months to do whatever the patient can afford to do, and see everyone that cancer patient wants to see. When you have a date with death, you realize that time is too short. But to a kid waiting for Santa to come, time seems to slow. Time loves to torture us.

Time is also the reason why people forget; at least that's what I think. It distorts the memory and thereby distorts the truth. Whenever Lucy describes her son's day, I start to think about my own childhood. And then I draw a blank, my memory only comes in previews, I don't get to see the whole movie, even though I was the one who wrote the script and directed it.

It's not fair. As people look back with that dazed but happy stare when they get on the subject of "well in my day'¦" I, thanks to time, cannot relive my youthful years.

But I think the real reason, or one of the causes of my memory loss, is because I was one of those children who would never climb up the slide, but preferred to take the correct way up. I wasn't those kids with dirt across their chins that would come up to you and ask, "Nice toy. I want to play with that." I would never even think about asking a stranger to play with his cool new toy. Well, maybe I did a few times, but they only stayed thoughts.

I never had adventure days, unless you count me screaming my head off at the sight of any bug and running inside the house where I thought I would be safe. In other words, I was a very shy chicken growing up. I was afraid of everything, and very gullible. And maybe that's why I wanted a brother so badly. Someone who could show me that a second of fun jumping off the tallest slide and breaking a bone is better than that one second wasted on wishing I had the guts to do it. Someone who could show me how to stick up for myself by fighting with me, or show me that a spec of dirt on one of my pretty little white dresses isn't the end of the world.

But alas, no. When my mother announced she was pregnant again, it was another girl ' a prissy one too'¦

The light in front of me turns from yellow to red suddenly. A horn beeps and I slam on my brakes. A huge black truck, from out of the depths of time itself, was inches from me. I turn my head to stare at its blinding white lights. And now I realize my time in the world is up.

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