Daylight Savings Time

Really 300xDaylight Savings Time is once again upon us. I find it to be both joyful and immensely confusing. More sun due to an arbitrary reassignment of time is certainly pleasing, even though the same effect could be had by getting up an hour earlier. Being, you know, human and partial to circadian rhythms, I like the sun. “Sun good,” I grunt in Neanderthalic tones as my blurry eyes adjust to the hour I just lost.

And what about that hour? Where did it go? Did it just disappear into the ether? Making an hour vanish seems kinda dark, don’t you think, like something Voldemort would do to a muggle on their birthday, right before he killed them. And if making an hour vanish is going to be an option, I want to pick which hour. Gatlinburg traffic, waiting at the doctor’s office, a presidential debate, these are hours of my life I’d like to get rid of. I don’t know what might have happened in the hour that vanished. Could have been great. Bound to have been better than a traffic jam surrounded by tourists determined to step in front of my car as they rush to the nearest candy shoppe, though candy shopping isn’t a bad way to use an extra hour someone could take away at any moment. I’m pretty sure the calories disappear with the hour.

As strange as all that seems, the oddest part of Daylight Savings Time for me is the clocks. Were they reset? Is it old time or new time? Every clock in the house forces me into an existential consideration of reality. It’s just too much. I need sticky notes on every timepiece telling me whether it’s been changed. Of course, then I’d have to worry whether the hour lost was the hour the notes were applied. The whole thing is just way too bizarre.

Source: David Swann