Does Time Fly When You're Getting Old? Everyone seems to think
so. The letters I received from husband's grandmother - then in
her mid 90's - had two recurrent themes. The first was that she
was tired, and that the days seemed to run together. The second
was that time seemed to be rushing by with ever increasing
speed. William James would agree. In the 1890's, James' writings
on age-related differences in the experience of time reflects
both these themes. He wrote that in childhood , experiences are
novel and distinct but in adulthood "each passing year converts
some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly
note at all, the days and weeks smooth themselves out in
recollection, and the years grow hollow and collapse." According
to Dr. William Friedman, who has spent his career exploring
developmental changes in the perception of time, this is the
first of four major classes of theories used to explain the
widely reported phenomenon that older people experience the
passage of time much more qui