TIME IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER...


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Take a look at the comic pictured above - I remember buying it back in 1971 (my original copy that is), probably on the 25th September, as comics were usually dated a week ahead of when they actually went on sale.  (It's difficult to be certain in every instance - sometimes it was just a few days.)  I'd religiously bought all 22 issues of JET and wished it had lasted longer, but I was prepared to follow its incorporated incarnation in BUSTER - at least for a while.

I can no longer recall how long I continued to buy the merged title, but as I said, I remember having the first one.  What surprises me is the date, because only eight months later, my family (and myself of course) moved to another house in another neighbourhood.  Only eight short months?  Surely it was a year or three at the very least?  But no - eight short months it was!  A year and five days after this comic came out, I was buying the first issue of The MIGHTY WORLD Of MARVEL, yet it seems to me that there was a huge gulf of time between the two comics, not a mere year.

I'm constantly surprised by such things.  Another example is the first ish of TV ACTION (in reality COUNTDOWN #59), which came out only a couple of months before we moved.  Yet, in my mind, it seems I bought it ages earlier, and enjoyed life in my old (then my current) house for ever such a long time before we flitted.  I've touched on this subject in a previous post, and suggested that it's because we tend to associate things (whether they be toys, comics, or whatever) that we had in one domicile with the entire time we lived there, rather than from the actual moment we first got them.

In other words, if you lived somewhere for seven years and bought something a couple of months before flitting, years later (when reminiscing) it often seems that you had the item for the full seven years, because you associate it with that particular house and the length of time you were there.  Or maybe it's just because when we're younger, a few weeks or months seems like a much longer period of time than when we're older.  After all, a month before Christmas to a kid feels like an eternity, whereas, to an adult, it passes far too quickly.

At least that's how it seems to me.  Perhaps you think I'm talking utter b*ll*cks, so I'd be interested in reading how my fellow Criv-ites regard such matters.  Does it likewise seem to you as I described, or, in your case, is it completely different?  Let rip in the comments section - if you can actually understand what the hell I'm burbling on about.  I have a feeling I've not conveyed it too well.

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