Parenting & Family Quote by Jonathan Carroll

Carroll’s line lands like a casual observation, then quietly rearranges how we think about age. The joke is built on a shared resource most adults feel starved of: time. By framing children and the elderly as people who "have a lot of time on their hands", he isn’t praising leisure so much as pointing to a social demotion. Both groups sit outside the primary economy of adult life: productivity, schedules, and constant justification. They are, in different ways, exempt.

That’s where the subtext sharpens. Childhood and old age are opposite ends of the timeline, but culturally they’re treated with similar paternalism. Decisions are made for them. Their pace is seen as an inconvenience. Their days can be filled, but not always by their own choosing. Carroll flips that marginalization into an advantage: when you’re not racing the clock, you can actually be present for someone else.

The line also smuggles in a gentle critique of midlife adulthood. If kids and seniors "get along so well" because they share time, then what’s our excuse? The implication is that adults have traded the capacity for unstructured attention for the status of being busy. Carroll’s phrasing stays light because the point is tender: connection isn’t just about having things in common; it’s about having minutes you’re willing to waste together.

Contextually, it fits a novelist’s sensibility: an interest in the overlooked alliances, the small social truths that read like whimsy until you notice the indictment underneath.