Funny How Time Slips Away
Series: Willie Knows
Three Willie Nelson songs, three different ways of looking at getting older.
[1. Funny How Time Slips Away] • [2. Nothing I Can Do About It Now] • [3. I’m Still Chasing Dreams]
Part 1 of 3: A 25-year-old kid drives to Columbus, never realizing he’s driving into the rest of his life.
Sometimes you don’t know you’re driving into the rest of your life... you just get in the car and drive.
January 1987
I was 25 years old, heading south on I-71 toward Columbus.
Medina.
Mansfield.
Delaware.
Columbus.
I can still see the road.
And I can still remember the tears.
I wasn’t falling apart.
I was just driving.
Leaving my family.
Leaving my friends.
Leaving everything familiar.
I was 25 years old and setting out on my own.
I had no idea what I was driving into.
I Had Already Learned About Goodbye
My mom died when I was 16.
Sixteen.
That’s awfully young to learn that someone you love can be here one day and gone the next.
By 18, I was pretty much on my own.
So I learned how to take care of myself.
How to keep moving.
How to figure things out.
But there’s a difference between having to leave and choosing to leave.
At 25, I was choosing.
And leaving people you love is harder than leaving a place.
Columbus
I wasn’t running away.
I was running toward something.
I just didn’t know what.
Columbus was waiting for me.
A new job.
A new life.
New friends.
New experiences.
Eventually, a wife.
A career.
Homes.
Mistakes.
Memories.
A whole life I couldn’t possibly see from the driver’s seat that morning.
That’s the funny thing about being 25.
You think you’re making a move.
You don’t realize you’re making a life.
Willie
I’ve always been a die-hard Merle Haggard guy.
My buddy Lowell is a big Johnny Cash fan.
But Willie Nelson?
Willie is one hell of a songwriter.
Some songs mean one thing when you’re young and something completely different when you’re older.
“Funny How Time Slips Away” is one of those songs.
When you’re 25, forty years sounds like forever.
Then one day you’re sitting there thinking about a drive you took when you were 25.
And you realize:
Holy shit. That was almost 40 years ago.
And Then There Was Kirk
I have four sisters.
I love all of them dearly.
But I’ve always been especially close to my sister Chris.
A few months after that drive to Columbus, Chris and her family came to visit me during the Ohio State Fair.
Willie Nelson was headlining a concert.
So naturally, we went.
There we were, sitting together, listening to Willie do what Willie does.
And somewhere in the middle of it, my nephew Kirk—still just a little guy—looked up and said something like:
“Why is he screaming?”
I don’t remember his exact words.
But I remember laughing.
And honestly, I kind of understood.
Willie doesn’t exactly have the smoothest voice in country music.
But that’s Willie.
That little boy is grown now.
And somehow, that moment is decades behind me.
Funny how time slips away.
Forty Years Later
Next year will be 40 years since that drive.
Forty years.
That’s hard to believe.
That 25-year-old kid is still in my head somewhere.
I can see him behind the wheel.
I can see the highway.
I can see the tears.
What I couldn’t see was everything waiting for me.
The people who would become family.
The friends who would become lifelong friends.
The people who would come into my life and eventually leave it.
The places I’d live.
The jobs I’d have.
The things I’d get right.
The things I’d get spectacularly wrong.
All the ordinary days that would somehow become my life.
That’s the trick.
You don’t feel time passing.
You feel moments.
Then one day you look back and realize those moments became decades.
I Wish I Could Talk to Him
Sometimes I wish I could pull that 25-year-old kid off the highway.
I’d sit beside him for a minute.
I’d tell him he’s going to be okay.
I’d tell him he doesn’t have to have everything figured out.
I’d tell him he’s going to meet people who will change his life.
He’s going to fall in love.
He’s going to make mistakes.
He’s going to lose people.
He’s going to laugh.
He’s going to cry.
And someday, almost 40 years from now, he’s going to look back at this exact drive and wonder where the hell the time went.
I’d tell him something else.
Call your family.
Spend time with your friends.
Tell the people you love that you love them.
Don’t assume there’s always going to be another chance.
Because when you’re 25, forty years feels like forever.
It isn’t.
The Part I Didn’t Understand
I thought I was leaving home that day.
I wasn’t.
I was carrying it with me.
My mother.
My family.
My friends.
My childhood.
The people who had shaped me.
All of it came along for the ride.
And maybe that’s why I was crying.
I wasn’t just leaving a place.
I was leaving one version of myself behind.
I just didn’t know it yet.
Medina. Mansfield. Delaware. Columbus.
Four places.
One highway.
One 25-year-old kid.
And a whole life waiting down the road.
Next year, it will be 40 years since I made that drive.
Forty years since I left.
Forty years since I sat behind that wheel with tears in my eyes, heading toward a future I couldn’t see.
I thought I had plenty of time.
We all do.
Until we look back and realize how much of it has already gone by.
That’s the thing about getting older.
You finally understand what the 25-year-old version of you couldn’t possibly know.
Time doesn’t announce itself.
It just keeps moving.
One day you’re driving to Columbus.
The next, you’re looking back at that kid and wondering how he got here so fast.
Gee, ain’t it funny, how time slips away.
🎵 These three songs started all of this:
[Listen to the "Lenny's Confessions: Willie Knows" playlist on Spotify]
Series: Willie Knows
[1. Funny How Time Slips Away] • [2. Nothing I Can Do About It Now] • [3. I’m Still Chasing Dreams]