How do you measure the passage of time? Obviously we use seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and 50th birthdays, but I mean those moments. Some of those are the year you graduated high school (1976), got married (1987) or divorced (1996). We also know the year of our children’s births (1989, 1992) and those of our parents (1933, 1940), but it’s difficult, for me at least, to put those dates in context. For example, many of us have our stories on “where we were” on September 11, 2001 and October 20, 2004, both epic disasters in New York, one real and one symbolic only to Red Sox and Yankee fans…

Lately I’ve been reeling when scanning channels, I note a date on a movie and think, ‘Wow, it’s been 20 years since “Field of Dreams” was released,’ before flashing a thought about where exactly those 20 (now 21) years went…

Another cinematic phenomena for adding context to racing years is seeing a movie listed that I’ve been meaning to see, and still consider “fairly recent,” but actually was released several years ago… Some examples:

  • Unforgiven (1992)
  • Braveheart (1995)
  • Fargo (1996)
  • Mystic River (2003)
  • V for Vendetta (2005)
  • The Departed (2006)

As I researched these films, the list became full of these dark films that for some reason I don’t want to see. Maybe I’ve got enough darkness.