It Is About Time

Several years ago, I have lost count of when it actually occurred, we as a State voted to discontinue the Daylight Savings Time ritual of springing forward with our clocks in the Spring and falling back in the Fall. Seems to me the reason behind the ritual was to either lessen the electricity load on the network, make us all more productive, or because the farmers of the nation were not always following the 9am to 5pm work rules of civilized city folk who wanted more leisure time after office hours.

The time-bending ritual did not seem have the desired effect. Cows and critters, trees and crops in general, farmers and city folk do not seem to find more time by changing the clock by an hour. In fact, the Monday after the time change both in the Spring and the Fall have become the most dangerous days of the year to be around others that are trying to adjust their internal clocks to the change. Driving accidents are much more common on these days, and I shutter to think of airliners taking off and landing while bodies readjust. Have you ever heard of a space launch in the days following a clock change? I didn’t research it but I would suppose that making sure everyone was showing up at the correct time, because you know someone would forget to change their clocks, would make the launch precarious at best.

Critters big and small do not care one whit about the clocks and frankly get annoyed when their feeding schedule gets changed. They blame the caretakers. On the farm we have tried to make it easier on them by changing the schedule by a half hour for two days and by the third day the herd is still aware something is amiss. They simply have to adjust just as we are adjusting with the change.

Our vote several years ago did not change the ritual of changing the clocks twice a year. At first I heard that we had to have one more change in order to straighten out our off-kilter, wanky, ill-advised, goof-ball of a law. Then I heard that all those electronic devices would need programmers to straighten the code out before we we could change the business of business with the time change and that could take another year. Now it has been several years and we are still changing our clocks every Spring and Fall.

Last Spring, when the clocks were moved ahead one hour, I protested. I did not change the bedside clock. At first it was because I got up early on March 14th and Mike was still asleep. Rather than wake him up I did not mess with the clock. When I went to bed before Mike that night, I had already taken my glasses off and could not begin to see the little buttons that need to be manipulated in order to change the time by an hour of slowly clicking through the sixty minutes. By the third day of groggy acceptance with all the rest of the clocks changed in the house I noticed the ritual was getting easier because most electronic devices changed the time on their own. But the old style bedside clock is not new or fancy, the red illuminated font on the front is barely readable with my aging eyesight.

With my body finally no longer feeling the effects of losing an hour of sleep of the Spring spring, I contemplated changing the time on the bedside clock but decided to protest instead and left the clock at the good old fall back Standard Time of one hour behind all the more progressive clocks that I own.

Since Spring, when I roll over at night, I squint to see the time. Then I have to add an hour, then I have to minus twelve minutes. Twelve minutes? I’m glad you asked. You see, I do not like to be late and have always set the clock in the bedroom ahead by twelve minutes. This way, if I want to get up by 5am (or whatever time I planning) the twelve minutes gives me just enough of a buffer to not be surprised by the day. The rest of the house clocks all have the correct time because, well, I figure I’m already up and functioning and twelve minutes will not help me one way or the other! But back to my protest…

I do not think my protest was very successful and November 7th at 2am is the next designated time change to reverse the springing ahead that we did in the Spring. Then, finally, I will be back on the same time as the rest of the folks (not counting the twelve minutes I will keep as a buffer).

But I still wonder what ever happened to our vote against changing the time at all?