Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Why daylight savings time is just a plot to keep us confused by J. G. Fabiano I wonder if, in my lifetime, the powers that be will come to their senses and leave our time alone. I also wonder if I am the only one in the nation who gets totally screwed up when they move the clocks ahead in the Spring. The same thing happens when they move the clocks back in the Fall. Time is important, but it is only when they start shifting it around on us that we understand just how important. Now don’t get me wrong. I like sunshine. I would just like it better if they didn’t change it around on us twice a year. The days have been getting longer and I have enjoyed going to work in the morning light instead of putting on my headlights. I was just about used to this new, longer day when daylight savings time reared its ugly head again. At least the people in charge of time make the change on a Sunday morning. That way most of us don’t have to worry about getting up for work at a new time the next day and have to rearrange our habits to adjust to the change, but Monday morning is a totally different story. Once again my alarm clock blasts its wake-up call in the dark. At first my body believes it’s some sort of joke because my biological clock has adjusted to starting the day with daylight shining in the windows. Peering through the sudden return of winter darkness I see the glowing red numbers on they alarm clock telling me it’s no joke, it’s time to get up and face the world but, even though my mind is telling me to get up, my body is telling me I have another hour to stay in bed. Swinging my legs off the bed and rolling the rest of my body after them, using the force of gravity to get me rolling, I fumble my way blindly to the bathroom. Switching on the light is the first of many tortures I will suffer throughout the day because of this governmental change of time. My eyes feel like they have been sand papered and it takes me a good minute to adjust to the harsh stab of electric light in the dark. When I have wiped away the tears I step into the shower in the hope the loss of an hour will not mess up too much of my day. I am wrong. The shower wakes me up but, as I step out from its steaming warmth I am engulfed by cold. Not your ordinary morning shivers but a deadening cold that reminds me too much of the depths of winter. My first thought is that my furnace has died. Then I remember our thermostats are all on timers set to warm different rooms at different times of the day and the bedroom isn’t due to be properly warmed up for another hour. Going downstairs in the dark to the kitchen the dark outside makes me feel like it is the dead of winter again. I feel no hunger. My body tells me I should be sleeping, not eating and the thought of putting Cheerios down my throat makes me gag. I opt for a quick cup of coffee to shock my dormant internal organs into action and it works, the rest of my body grudgingly acknowledges that it is not going back to bed. But this realization does nothing to improve my mood. I hate driving to work in the dark. In fact, I hate driving anywhere in the dark and, on an April morning, when I have just got used to driving in the light, going back to winter driving irritates the hell out of me. Driving in the dark brings back memories of January through March when all I can focus on is the bright headlights of passing cars made even brighter by the mountains of snow that border our back roads. Being a teacher I am controlled by the ringing of bells that tell me where to be and where to go. Even though the clocks at school have been adjusted according to the new time, my mind and body are not even close to being ready for the new schedule. I am late for most, if not all, my classes and the only thing that keeps me thinking I am permanently brain damaged is that most of my students were just as confused. Lunch time is more of a disaster than usual. Nobody is hungry during the first lunch because it’s at a biological time of the day when nobody is supposed to be hungry. By the time the last lunch has been called everybody is starving, with many students sneaking out of their classes and study halls in order to find some sustenance. Did I say students? I think there are more teachers in the late lunch then I had ever seen before. In fact, the whole day is confused with teachers walking into the wrong classes, the loudspeaker announcements breaking into times they are not supposed to break into, and a kind of haze over most of the classes because everybody knows they are an hour out of whack. The end of the day doesn’t come soon enough and I know I am about to enjoy the one benefit of setting the clocks ahead. As I am driving home I notice that most of the drivers around me are wearing new sunglasses they got for Christmas. Those who are not wearing glasses are seen squinting into the sun, driving 10 to 15 miles an hour below the speed limit, hoping not to hit or be hit on the way home. The first thing I do as I enter my house is dive for the refrigerator. I am literally starving because of the change of time. I do not take the time to make a traditional sandwich I just eat everything one at a time, cramming a slice of ham, a slice of cheese and a couple of slices of bread into my mouth and then follow it down with a belt of A1 sauce. Somehow, I hope they will form themselves into a sandwich on the way down to my stomach so my intestines will think I had a real meal. My wife, who also tells me she has been confused all day, makes dinner at the new time but I eat very little because I have just pigged out on A-1 sauce and cheese. My night is not much better than my day. When I think I should be watching talk shows I am still watching the nightly news. When I think I should be watching the nightly news I am watching something about three Tasmanian Amazons who are trying to take over the world. If they do, maybe they can do something about daylight saving time. I go to bed at what I think should be the right time, even thought it isn’t quite dark outside yet. As I lie in bed, suffering the pains of indigestion and its spectacularly loud consequences, I wonder how long it will be before my biological clock will catch up to the new time that has been imposed upon me. I know I will adjust in a couple of weeks and settle into my new routine and I will forget about all the confusion and the biological discomfort. Then, just when I think everything in the world is as it should be, daylight saving time will raise its ugly head again and fall back an hour and I will have to go through the whole thing again. In my lifetime I wonder if the powers over all we are will find some compassion and leave our time alone. For the next few months I will forget about the confusion and chaos caused by this change of time but, then it will raise its ugly head when the clocks fall back to where they are not supposed to be. Before I drift off to sleep I find myself wondering if, in my lifetime, the powers that be will come to their senses and leave time alone. The End.
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