As I fire up my computer to begin this column, it’s 6:30 on Monday morning and still pitch black dark outside my window. Exactly twelve hours ago, when I was sitting in the yard reading the paper while George grilled some first-of-the-season hamburgers, Daylight Saving Time seemed like a really good idea.
Now, not so much. Too confused and fuzzy-headed to write, I decide to surf the Internet to see if I can find some chatter about “springing forward.” Yep. Quite a bit. Some of it amusing, some thought-provoking, and some super-stupid.
I herewith share some of the comments I unearthed about Daylight Saving Time. I leave it to you to decide which of those categories each falls into:
- I hate DST because it takes me half an hour to figure out how to change the clock in my car.
- DST is not about saving time. It’s about having more daylight hours.
- I don’t understand why the scientists made us do this.
- If you don’t like DST, move to Arizona or Hawaii.
- Let’s have a new holiday—Spring Forward Monday.
- DST makes it impossible to get my kids to bed at a reasonable hour.
- The only people who like DST are golfers.
- Let’s fall back 30 minutes on November 4 and then never change again.
- Most people feel much better now due to there being more daylight hours.
- Get rid of DST. The extra hour of daylight fades my drapes.
- Any politician running on a platform of “leave the clocks alone” would be a shoo-in.
- I hate having to argue with my dog when I make him wait an extra hour for his supper.
- DST was designed to give the bankers more time to fleece us.
- Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it on the bottom, and have a longer blanket.
- The extra hour of daylight plays the dickens with my tomato plants.
- Feeling sleep-deprived has nothing to do with DST.
It’s because people need to replace their mattresses and pillows. - Don’t argue about DST. It’s an act of God.
- When global warming gets worse, it will be DST all year.
- My only clock is my cell phone so I don’t really have to do anything.
- Not turning on a light bulb for one hour saves less than a penny. Why do we go to all this trouble for that?
- DST is just the nanny state trying to control our lives. There was no DST when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution.
- I love to sit on the patio having drinks on a sunny evening.
- The sun will come up when it’s supposed to and go down when it’s supposed to. The hour assigned to it is man-made.
- DST is opposed by farmers whose cows do not like it.
Farmers should not have clocks in their barns. - Finally, the clocks I didn’t reset last fall will be right again.
After reading all those comments (and hundreds more), I feel more confused and fuzzy-headed than ever. But I have to admit that this column pretty much wrote itself.
(March 18, 2012)