Now don’t forget to set your clocks forward this Saturday night. Who knows what could happen if we don’t have a collaborative effort. Squelching that extra hour is hard work; it takes a village to lose an hour and still maintain equilibrium in the world at large. Those towns out West that refuse to go along with the change have become a black hole in the fabric of our nation. Can you even name them? The light has completely faded from their community after failing to save that hour of daylight, year after year. Don’t let it happen to us.
Saving Light Again
Every year on a Sunday in March someone decides we need to save light. I know sometimes it seems we live in a very dark world, but I don’t believe we can save light anymore than we can save time.
In fact, I’ve probably said this all before and maybe said it better, so I will just cut and paste the last rambling monologue on Daylight Savings time for your enjoyment:
This weekend is the time to change our clocks again for the strange tradition of Daylight Savings. I’ve never been sure just what we are saving by going through this ritual. In the spring we push our clocks forward so that everyone loses an hour of sleep and feels horrible for at least a week after; in the fall we push our clocks backward so that for one day we can feel free to sleep longer in the morning, taking our time to brew and smell our own coffee instead of rushing through a drive-through coffee house.
But what are we saving? Daylight? Is that something you can save, like lightening bugs in a glass jar? “Well, I’ve saved an hour of daylight. I think I’ll use that later in the week.” Later when? At midnight on Saturday when you want to go out and play a game of croquet on the snow-covered lawn?
For the first three years of my marriage, every fall and spring when the time changed, my husband and I were either an hour late to church or an hour early. People under twenty-five don’t even know there is a daylight savings time. They are either sleeping in, as always on a Sunday, or playing video games with the shades drawn so the “light” won’t glare on the screen. Besides, they can’t save money, why would they want to save light?
Of course, older folks, like myself, check the calendar for a month before the big event, dreading and yet anticipating the change. At least then there will be something new in our same old, sad lives. Yes, laughing at the young people straggling into church on Sunday an hour late is always a highlight to the elderly. We poke the person next to us, and point. “Ha! Look at them. I bet they didn’t even know the time changed. Young people – what do they know?”
Perhaps Daylight Savings is really some sort of sleep deprivation experiment by the government. In the spring they take away our hour of sleep and watch us fall apart, lose our train of thought, be unable to follow what’s going on in the world around us. In the fall, when it’s time for an election, they give us back the hour and we are so grateful we’ll vote any way they’d like. We don’t even know we’re being manipulated.
Or daylight savings could just be another way for stores to advertise a sale. The Pre-Daylight Savings Sale-“Get in here before the time changes and these prices are gone forever!” And the Post-Daylight Savings Sale – “We’ve saved you another whole hour to shop. So hurry before the light fades.”
Allie Robbins says
Funny. My sentiments exactly.