ADAM ARMOUR: Can't stop tumbling through holes in time's blanket

May 16—The other day, I awoke to find my daughter was 5 years old.

I cannot overstate my level of shock. Mere moments ago, she couldn't talk and communicated with us in a strange, birdlike series of coos and squawks. Seconds before that, she was stumbling from the ottoman to the coffee table for the first time. And that was after I blinked and realized she was no longer an infant falling asleep in my arms at 2 a.m. while watching episodes of "Portlandia" and "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers."

This anomaly required some investigation.

"When did that tiny creature we produced turn 5?" I said to my wife, Mandy, as I stared at our creation digging the marshmallows out of her bowl of knock-off Lucky Charms and babbling nonstop to herself about the evolutionary chains of various Pokémon. I was completely baffled.

Mandy sighed and shook her head.

"I know," she said. "I can't believe it. She's 5. You're 40. Where did the time go?"

I swiveled to stare her in the eye.

"I'm what?" I said.

"What?"

"Yeah, what?"

"No, what did you ask me?"

"Yeah, I asked you what. What did you say I am?"

"40?"

You ever get that sensation of being completely disoriented? Like, you suddenly realize while driving that you have no idea how you got where you are or where you're going? This was like that.

"40?" I said. "As in, years old?"

Mandy looked as confused as I felt.

"Yes," she said. "You were 39 earlier this week. You had a birthday. Now you're 40. That's the way time works. I feel like I shouldn't have to explain this to you."

I dropped to the floor, my legs unable to keep my body upright. It was as if gravity had suddenly increased tenfold. Or maybe disappeared entirely. My head felt like either phenomenon could be true.

From some distant universe, I heard my wife whisper, "What is wrong with you?"

How could I explain? You see, it was at that moment I realized I must have fallen through a hole in the fabric of time. If she hadn't — if time for her had remained a relatively straightforward "point-A-to-point-B" affair, she'd never understand.

"Not again," I groaned quietly.

Let me see if I can explain this in relatively simple terms. My theory is that time is sort of like a blanket folded on a shelf in your closet. Rather than moving along a straight path, it weaves back and forth, creating layers atop of layers. Each represents a given span of history, both the traditional kind ... things that have happened ... but also the history that has yet to take place. Future past stuff, if you will.

Now, I suspect there are places in this world in which the fabric of time runs thin for one reason or another. You ever experienced deja vu? Thin spot in the fabric. How about a date that seems to fly by in seconds? Or a 20-minute meeting that feels as if it's gone on for hours? Thin spots. And if the fabric gets thin enough in a place, well, then you've got yourself a hole in time, and you could accidentally stumble right through your current layer and find yourself either in the past or future just like that.

You can't see me, but I snapped my fingers.

Pretty sure that's what happened to me. I was moseying along one day and, in a totally Adam Armour move, bumbled my way through a hole in the fabric of time. Same as I did when I found myself cleaning out my college apartment just weeks after graduating high school. Or realizing 16 years had passed just months after getting hired to write for The Itawamba County Times.

What other logical explanation is there for how a guy who was 17 ... then 26 ... then 31 ... not that long ago can suddenly awaken one morning to find himself a quadragenarian with a Pokémon-obsessed 5-year-old and a confused wife who isn't tumbling upward through the moth-eaten blanket of time?

No matter how frantically he grabs at time's frayed edges, or how tightly he clings to whichever loose threads he can grab, he'll never stop falling. When you read this, please pity the 57-year-old sap who wrote it just yesterday.

ADAM ARMOUR is the news editor for the Daily Journal and former general manager of The Itawamba County Times. You may reach him via his Twitter handle, @admarmr.