I was born with a silver clock in my mouth; it was lemony with a metallic after taste and after thirty-five years being parenthesized in this brain and body I still cherish its languid tick and tock, the calm onomatopoeia of its measure. That clock still beats inside of middle-aged flesh. As a youth my appreciation for "the taking of one's own time" became a part of my identity and it also fetched me a despised nickname- an aspersion if you would have asked me then or now. One particular day care provider, Mama Two (my mother named her that so that I would "see" and "respect" her as if she were my mother also or mother number two) would get frustrated and seemingly overwhelmed at my leisurely pace and would show her impatience with me by yelling at me to hurry and calling me "slowpoke". That designation was (and still would be) anathema to me. During those early, formative years I first remember experiencing intense dislike when I heard her exclaim those words at me, trying to motivate my pace with names and such...Slowpoke! would make a four year old's skin crawl...But deep down, it was a treasure of time and I felt as though, from even that early age, that I was a millionaire of time. I measure it now as currency, illusory, but substantial- dust mixed with a heightened perception by a population gives that currency gravitas...