Adventures in my own special space-time continuum

It has been a very interesting week around The Community News.

As I write this it is Wednesday. Less than a week ago a huge crowd of people showed up at the crack of dawn in front of Bearcat Stadium to punish themselves by running 5K for the benefit of a local family.

I have to say when I saw the number of people who came out on a drizzly morning, I got a lump in my throat. The Marcia Walters Memorial Thanksgiving Trot is a testament not only to the hard-working group that puts it together every year, but also to the vast number of people in this community who exhibit real love, generosity, and community spirit.

I tend to worry, when we see the growth curve that is about to happen, if this community can maintain its character and ethos. I sure hope so, and as long as there are groups like the Thanksgiving Trot board, the Aledo Childrens’ AdvoCats, and other groups that maintain the community spirit we have, we are in good hands.

Then on Friday the community filled up the visitors’ side at the Midlothian ISD stadium to watch the Bearcats as they seek to get back to the state championship game.

The Midlothian game featured a tenacious group playing for the home team. From the press box, it looked a little scary to this third-string sports reporter who filled in for the first-string and second-string sports reporters who were traveling for Thanksgiving.

I should not have worried — in my experience the Bearcats have always been great at making halftime adjustments, and both the defense and offense stepped up when the game was on the line.

If you have followed this far you may be wondering what any of this has to do with my own special space-time comtinuum.

Allow me to explain.

The person who normally lays out the papes of the paper has been sick, so I am filling in to get our pages to the printer.

As I sat down to write this, I told our printer I would have the paper ready “in a couple of hours.”

People who work with me know how notoriously bad I am at estimating how much time a task will take.

I usually err on the overly-optimistic side, so I often find myself wondering why I didn’t get as far along on a task than I thought I would.

Minutes become hours, hours can become days.

In that way, I’m kind of like a construction contractor who tells you how long your project is going to take.

So in that regard, when I told my printer it would be a “couple of hours,” I’m emotionally bracing myself for 4-6 hours at best.

In the “olden days” my dad used to help me put together the paper.

While everything is electronic now, back in those days I would desinn pages on the computer, and we would print them out in sections on a laser printer.

My dad would wax the back of the pieces and paste them down on paste-up sheets.One time we were working on the paper, and dad said “how much longer do you think it will be.

I answered “probably a couple of hours.”

My dad had a way of clarifying, and asked “is that regular hours or Randy hours?”

Yeah, he got it.

Some dance to the beat of their own drummer.

I work according to my own clock.