Monday, March 12, 2012

Daylight Savings Dilemma


A neighbor’s kid explained Daylight Savings Time to me this way: “They can’t decide, and they keep changing the time.”

Now I get it. These ‘they’ are confused, and so they are determined to confuse everyone else.

I do my best to be prepared. I start a day early. I begin changing all the clocks that let me. This is a habit I have from the time in 1983 when I left my visiting father & step-mother in front of the movie theatre to see the movie Gandhi.

My father joked that he needed to see it while visiting California so that he can causally drop an ‘Oh, Gandhi, I saw that when I was in the United States,’ when one of their many friends in Israel mentions having seen something in Paris, or in Stockholm. I had seen Gandhi the movie, so I just dropped them off. It was April, and yes, it was Sunday when Daylight Savings Time began.

You can guess the rest- I was clueless, and when I came to pick them up, I was told the second showing had started an hour before. The theatre let my father & his wife stay to see what they missed when they came in for the matinee, an hour after it started.

Gandhi, for your information, is a 191 minutes. Long enough to teach me a lesson.

But my neighbor’s kid is right. Because while in 1983 the time-change took place in April and November, it now seems to get closer and closer. This year we got a measly four-months taste of standard time. Just as I was getting on top of how to manage the change in an elegant way, ‘they’ are at it. They can’t make up their mind as to when it starts or ends. A moving target.

Keep the masses confused and disoriented. From the mouth of babes.

Can you tell I’m suffering adjustment pains? Got to get some coffee.

9 comments:

Jaye Robin Brown said...

Someone I know suggested they split the difference and make it a permanent half hour change. Works for me.

Mirka Breen said...

I *LOVE* problem-solvers^. Thumbs up!

Ruth Schiffmann said...

This biggest nuisance for me is having to change the clock in my car =/

Mirka Breen said...

Done now. Right?
I'm STILL working on changing the clock in my head.

Tina Cho said...

Korea doesn't do time change. I sort of miss it, as I don't like having the sun up at 5am and waking my kids early. I wonder if it's only the U.S. who does daylight savings?

Mirka Breen said...

That's one vote for it^, and someplace where it isn't. :)
About seventy countries around the world have adopted it. I fully understand the rational. My grumpy adjustment pains are over now, until the next time.

Marcia said...

Shortly before they changed the spring and fall DLS dates, we bought a "smart clock" that changes itself. Too bad that DLS doesn't start and end on the first Sunday in April and October anymore -- or whatever the days were. Now, not only do we have to spring ahead and fall back manually, but we have to remember that on two OTHER dates during the year, the clock will do it for us when it shouldn't.

Shannon Hitchcock ~ Children's Writer said...

The time change "messes" with me. I'm still tired and don't want to get up in the mornings.

Ruth Donnelly said...

I agree with the neighbor child. I wish 'they' would just leave it one way or the other!