It’s All Happening Too Darn Fast!

We all grew up thinking there were 24 hours in a day — but when you were eleven, and it was five minutes before the bell with your buddies ready to explore the woods, each second felt like three weeks. Then summer hit. You were home with basic cable, your single parent at work, and all your friends at camp. Each hour after The Price is Right felt like a month.

Like Scotty McCreery sings in Five More Minutes, “At 18, I turned my helmet in… and I cried, ‘Man, next time to get in here, I’ll have to buy a ticket.’” Time sped up. Sports ended, priorities shifted and adulthood hit. Rent was due thirty minutes—sorry, days—after you just paid it. That exam you’d study for tomorrow? It’s tomorrow morning.

Then you became a parent. Sleepless nights full of “Am I doing enough?” brought back those old feelings of waiting for the clock to tick 3:30 so you could go home and watch Jonovision. Then the baby came. The days felt as long as the Leafs’ cup drought, but the years… as short as your average Kardashian marriage. Twenty minutes ago, I was terrified to bathe my tiny baby. Now I risk a separated shoulder launching my full-grown eleven-year-old into the pool.

Summer is already halfway over. And the truth is, we only get a handful of summers like this with our kids. The wait for the next one — through six months of London Spriwintfall and its grey, damp gloom — will feel longer than waiting for a cereal box prize in the mail.

So say yes. Yes to flashlight tag. Yes to backyard campouts. Yes to silent Marco Polo.

There aren’t many Summer Days left in 2025. And you’ll be asked to play a lot less often in future summers than you think. Like Ryan Holiday says, P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E is better than P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S, and +25 is so much nicer than -25 when it comes to running around the backyard.

 

Jeremy McCall is a married father of 3, a social services case manager, and known as “The Dadfather”, being the founder and Past President of Dad Club London.