I’ve always heard that “a watched pot never boils.” I happened to be thinking about that the other morning. Usually I turn on the heat under the coffee water and go off to do other things until the water boils, but this time I decided to stay by and watch it to see just how long it takes. It took 10 minutes, almost forever, with me watching intently for that first sign of bubbles rising in the water.

But as I was sitting at breakfast later, looking back, it didn’t seem like long at all. The passing of time is weird, at least our experience of it is.

I have often noticed how the passing of time feels different, given different circumstances. As I was growning up, I was often impatient to be grown up and getting there took forever. When I was 15 it seemed like it was takingme 50 years to reach 20 years old. But when I got there, there was this strange feeling of how did I get here so suddenly? Looking back at my high school years, 1954-1957, it felt as though they had flashed by. The future that had seemed so long in coming was rushing in and I was making some big decisions as we steered into the rush.

Looking back, time once past often seems to have moved very quickly. All my life, many of the people I have been around were older than I. Suddenly, this year, the last remainingmembers of my parents’ generation in our family have passed away and I have become the old man of the family. I’m thinking back to the 1940s and how old the 70-year-old folks seemed to me then.

I thought they were really ancient. Now here I am at that age, but I still feel young! I wonder if those 70-year-olds back then still felt young? These days I see 60-year-olds who are old and I see 90-year-olds who are still young! It seems to me I can recall a radio program back in the years after World War II called “Life Begins at 80!” Can anyone confirm that memory?

Come Jan. 8 in the New Year, my wife Nancy and I will have been married 50 years. We were married Jan. 8, 1961. It doesn’t seem that long ago. But as time has rushed by the kids were born, grew up, married, had their own families and the grandkids are about to grow up, too! Our first granddaughter has just graduated from college at ASU in Jonesboro. That is amazing to me since it seems just a short while ago that I was finishing college myself.

I’ve tried to notice certain things as our marriage has moved through the stages of family life. But I’m not necessarily going to offer a lot of advice about being married. One thing I have figured out along the way is that one should never assume that he has it all figured out. You pretty much have to keep figuring it out as you go. One area that is especially challenging is how to advise your spouse in the areas of her expertise.

Someone recently told me a story about a retiree who decided that after a career as an efficiency expert in business, in his retired years he could help his wife find more efficient ways to handle her work around the house. He didn’t get far. I may have to boast a little because the first time I tried that when we were a young married couple I got by with it. My wife, who is an excellent cook in almost every possible way, used to fry eggs with lace around the edges. I decided I needed to show her how to fry an egg without the lace.

Turn down the heat a little and stand over it constantly keeping hot grease over the whole egg evenly by turning it with the spatula. That is the only thing I ever tried to teach her about cooking.

We stopped eating fried eggs years ago, but I’m pretty sure if I volunteered to teach her how to cook something now she would invite me to cook it myself.

In retirement I do often fix breakfast - Cheerios or Raisin Bran with two-percent milk, jelly on bread, instant coffee and a banana!

When you get married, even when you are a fairly compatible couple, there are always some things to figure out together. Is the toilet paper supposed to hang from the front of the roll or from the back of the roll? Should the toothpaste tube be squeezed in the middle or at the bottom?

Does the jelly jar stay in the cabinet or in the refrigerator? Who sleeps on which side of the bed? Whose stuff goes where in the closets?

Do the bananas go in the cooler or on the counter?

One of the things that takes some special effort in figuring out is - When is he right? and When is she right? What if it comes down to -- OK, you got to be right the last time so I get to be right this time? Obviously when you are right all the time that means your spouse is wrong all the time, which means you have a problem. Sometimes it turns out that you are wrong even when you are right. That is you may win an argument, but what you lose in the winning is more than you gain by the win.

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.

He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society He can be contacted by email at joe369@centurytel.

net, or call 621-1621.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/05/2011