Guys with crazy genetic diseases involving time

Time is perhaps the most fascinating and relentless force of all. It changes each of us constantly and eventually removes us from the picture altogether. No one can speed it up or slow it down. The most we can do is create the illusion that we can, with skin care products, hair dye, plastic surgery and so-called superfoods. But it constantly pulls away, eating away at us into faded, fragile images of our former selves. Maybe that's why speculative stories about guys like these intrigue us, because they encourage us to ask, 'What if time behaved differently for us?' What would be the ramifications of this? It's interesting and amusing that multiple authors have dealt with the same issues, and the conditions they inflict on their poor heroes can be compared to medical prognoses, allowing us to ponder some possible answers. Here goes.

Tom Hazard (from How to Stop Time)
He has a condition that causes him to age incredibly slowly, at the rate of one year in every 15. He has seen a lot of history in his life, meeting celebrities such as Shakespeare, Captain Cook and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This gives him a lot of information for his current job as a high school history teacher, but Tom finds it difficult to deal with the downside, which is outliving everyone he cares about. (My opinion is here.)

Benjamin Button (from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
I love the concept of Poor Benjamin's Tale. Your life path is opposite to that of other people. He is born as a haggard, gray-haired man and ages backwards until his death of old age, like a newborn baby. The image of how he and the love of his life face their final moments together is haunting; an elderly woman holding a helpless baby. I believe that the film starring Brad Pitt surpassed F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, on which it was based.

Henry de Tamble (from The Time Traveler's Wife)
His condition once saved his life at age 5, but he feels it will also be the death of him. Henry goes back and forth to different stages of his own future and past, with the inability to control when this will happen. Your genetic clock resets itself randomly, often at extremely embarrassing moments. He always disappears without a trace, leaving a pile of clothes on the floor, only to appear completely naked at another time. But he has the consolation of some interesting conversations with himself at different ages. To some extent, this gives him a comforting glimpse of what's to come for him, but how terrifying for Henry when his future self no longer visits him. What should this mean? (My opinion is here.)

Dorian Gray (from The Picture of Dorian Gray)
You could say that his time condition didn't develop until his late teens or early twenties. This young man longed to trade places with his own portrait, because it would be so wonderful to remain beautiful and young. Suddenly, this is what happens. The canvas carries the weight of his difficult life and bad choices, so Dorian hides it in his attic. Meanwhile, everyone wonders how he manages to remain so attractive. We are bound to reach it at some point, because that is the nature of time, and we know it will be difficult when it does. (Here's my opinion.)

Jesse Tuck (from Eternal Tuck)
It can be said that this teenager and his entire family caught their condition from contaminated water. Evidently there was some kind of supernatural insect in the stream from which they drank, which preserved them from the ravages of aging from then on. Furthermore, it strengthened each of them so that they were impossible to kill. So when Jesse visits his childhood sweetheart Winnie's grave long after she has aged and passed away, he is still the same handsome young man he was in the 1920s. Only his fashion sense has changed. His is perhaps the most tragic story of all. For who would really choose this kind of indestructible immortality?

What a wild ride it would be to take all these stories and read them consecutively. If you're like me, they can help reconcile you with your rapidly aging self. Maybe ours is the best case scenario after all, because these guys' lives were filled with so much difficulty and suffering. Would you trade places with any of them? Perhaps I will end with the legendary figure who represents the condition each of us must endure.

Father Time
He is not actually a mortal, but a personified image of the passage of time in our lives. He's elderly and bearded because he's been around literally forever. His scythe and hourglass represent the one-way movement we all must deal with. The young will grow old, but the old cannot rejuvenate themselves to start over. Presenting him in a human form like the rest of us is fitting, because it could be argued that we all have a genetic condition regarding time, the same as the guys on my list. It starts ticking the moment we are born. We know it is chronic and will become terminal, but compared to them, we wouldn't have it any other way.

You might like my related list of Evergreen Children, those storybook kids who never grow up. It turns out there is a lot they can teach us.