I'm sure most of us remember being a kid and you have all of this

Host: The afternoon light hung low, golden and wistful, slanting through the windows of an old train carriage. The rails hummed beneath, steady and ancient, carrying the rhythm of departure and memory. The sky outside stretched into a pale horizon, half blue, half amber, and the air inside smelled faintly of iron and coffee.

Jack sat by the window, his reflection merging with the passing fields, his eyes grey and distant, watching the world slip by. Across from him, Jeeny rested her head against the seat, her fingers absentmindedly tracing the fog on the glass. There was a kind of quiet ache between them — the kind that only time could shape.

Jeeny: (softly) “Andrea Arnold once said, ‘I’m sure most of us remember being a kid and you have all this endless time where two weeks before Christmas feels like ten years. I used to go to bed to try and make it go faster.’ Don’t you miss that? That feeling of time stretching — like it was infinite?”

Jack: (without turning) “Miss it? Maybe. But I also think it’s an illusion we grow out of. Time never stretched, Jeeny. We just didn’t know yet how quickly it runs out.”

Host: The train swayed gently, the sunlight flickering through the trees like a film reel, each beam a frame of lost days.

Jeeny: “But isn’t that the beauty of it? That illusion? When you’re a child, you don’t count hours — you just live them. You wait for Christmas, and the waiting becomes its own kind of magic.”

Jack: (smirking) “Magic? Or impatience dressed up as innocence? I remember being a kid and hating that feeling. The waiting was agony. The clock ticked louder than my thoughts. I’d give anything now to have a day move that slowly again — but I didn’t appreciate it then.”

Host: His voice carried both sarcasm and regret, like someone quoting a ghost of his younger self. The train rumbled past a river, and the light rippled over his face.

Jeeny: “That’s just it, Jack. Back then, we felt time. Every second mattered. Every small thing — a snowfall, a present, a whisper — felt like it might last forever. Adults forget how to feel time. We rush through it like we’re running from it.”

Jack: “Because we are. When you’re young, you want time to move faster. When you’re old, you want it to stop. Either way, it never listens.”

Jeeny: “Maybe time listens — but only to those who still know how to dream. Kids don’t think about next week. They live in tomorrow morning. Their worlds are smaller, so time feels bigger.”

Host: The train entered a tunnel, and for a few seconds, all light vanished. The darkness pressed in, thick and humming, until the carriage burst out again into the open sky — the sunlight returning like a held breath released.

Jack: (quietly) “It’s strange. When you’re a kid, you sleep to make time go faster. As an adult, you lie awake wishing it would slow down.”

Jeeny: “Because when we’re young, we wait for life to happen. When we’re older, we realize it already did.”

Host: Her words hung in the air, gentle but piercing, like a note played on an old piano that still remembers every touch. Jack turned to look at her for the first time, and for a moment, his eyes softened, the steel melting into something older — memory.

Jack: “Do you ever wonder why time feels different in memory? How two weeks of waiting for Christmas could feel longer than ten years of adulthood?”

Jeeny: “Because memory doesn’t measure time — it measures emotion. As children, we lived in wonder. We were fully present. Adults live in repetition. We forget to look.”

Host: The landscape outside blurred into fields of wheat, their edges shimmering under the setting sun. The light painted Jeeny’s hair in streaks of copper, her face glowing with quiet sincerity.

Jack: “Wonder fades, Jeeny. Life teaches you that waiting usually ends in disappointment. The world isn’t made of Christmas mornings. It’s made of Mondays.”

Jeeny: (smiling sadly) “And yet, even Mondays once felt magical — when they meant another day to play. It’s not time that changed, Jack. It’s us. We traded curiosity for calendars.”

Host: A long silence followed. The train rattled over a bridge, the river below catching fragments of the sun, breaking them into trembling gold.

Jack: “So what are you saying? That we can go back? That we can feel time like we did as kids again?”

Jeeny: “Not go back. But remember. We can choose to see time not as something that leaves us, but as something that arrives — moment by moment. Children live in arrival. We live in departure.”

Jack: “That’s poetic, but life doesn’t slow down for poetry. Deadlines, bills, losses — they steal the minutes.”

Jeeny: “Only if you let them. Time’s not stolen, Jack — it’s spent. The tragedy isn’t that it passes. It’s that we forget to notice how beautiful it was while it did.”

Host: Her voice trembled with quiet passion, the kind that doesn’t demand belief but awakens it. Jack looked down at his hands, the faint lines etched across his skin, the evidence of years that had slipped without permission.

Jack: “When I was a kid, I’d close my eyes and wish Christmas would come sooner. Now I close them and wish it wouldn’t come so fast.”

Jeeny: “That’s because you finally understand the gift was never Christmas. It was the waiting.”

Host: The train began to slow, the rhythm of the wheels softening, the world outside shifting into the orange haze of evening. The station approached — small, old, almost forgotten, like a memory returning after years.

Jack: “So what do we do with that? With the waiting, the nostalgia, the ache?”

Jeeny: “We live like children again. We count sunsets instead of days. We lie awake not to make time go faster — but to feel it moving, softly, through us.”

Host: The doors opened with a hiss. The evening air rushed in, cool and sweet, carrying the scent of rain and wood smoke. Jack stood, but didn’t move. He looked at Jeeny, his voice low, fragile — a thread of truth unraveling.

Jack: “I don’t know if I remember how.”

Jeeny: (smiling gently) “Then start by waiting for something again — not because you need it to come, but because you love the feeling that it will.”

Host: She stepped off the train, her figure framed by the light spilling from the platform. Jack watched her go, his reflection flickering in the glass like a boy staring out a window on Christmas Eve — waiting, wondering, alive with the slow ache of time.

The doors closed. The train began to move again, and Jack leaned back in his seat, his eyes half-shut. The rhythm of the tracks echoed like a lullaby, ancient and kind.

Host: Outside, the stars began to emerge, one by one, like memories rekindled. And in that quiet, moving carriage — somewhere between past and future — a man began to remember how it felt to wait, not for an ending, but for the wonder of what was still to come.