This whole daylight savings time thing has me upset. One wouldn't think that an hour more or less, here or there, now or then, spring or fall, could have that much impact, but it does.
I've reached an age that, to be honest, there were times I thought I wouldn't reach. The young never consider becoming old. It seems impossible, and therefore not important. More important things take up the minds of the young: the opposite sex, mirrors, the opposite sex, cars and trucks, the opposite sex, and so forth.
Time? Uh uh. Not for the young. Not until you get here, then, at some age, time becomes pretty darned important, which is why I resent people tinkering with it and confusing me. Speaking of time, now would be a good time for my "time" joke.
I was driving along a rural road one day when I looked over and saw a farmer holding a good-sized pig up in the air so the pig could grab an apple off the tree. Then he held the pig while the apple was chewed up, hoisting him up once again for another apple. I stopped because, well, because time worries me. I climbed the fence and walked over.
"Say," I asked, "what are you doing?"
ADVERTISEMENT
The farmer gave me a look and said: "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm feeding my pigs." There were several more milling around his ankles.
"But," I stated somewhat emphatically, "doesn't this take a lot of time?"
"But," said the farmer back, "what's time to a pig?"
Indeed. Back to the subject: Time becomes more important as one begins to see that it's not going to last forever. I'm beginning to see that. At a young age, exposed to farm tractors, guns and loud rock and roll, I worried that at this age I'd be too deaf to hear St. Peter's call; now, as confused as I am about what time it really is, maybe my time will be up and I won't know.
Which is why I'm worked up over "saving" time. For one thing, I now find myself eating supper in the middle of the afternoon, which is fine and dandy, except for then it seems like I need another meal before I go to bed, which by the clock is about another half day later. My stomach is confused.
My head is confused when I now get up and the sun isn't where it's supposed to be, supper isn't where it's supposed to be, and bedtime isn't, either. Each time I feel like they're where they're supposed to be, I look at a clock and someone has instructed me that they aren't.
What really worries me is that if they can do it once, they can do it again. And who does this, exactly? Is there a Commission on Confusing Time somewhere? Is it the government? If it is the government, don't they have better things to do? Like health care, education, and the budget? Maybe it's true that government has gotten too large if there is a Committee somewhere arguing about whether or not they should "adjust" my clock some more.
I'm concerned that I have no power over any of this. I'm concerned that I'll get up tomorrow and find that my supper, because of some commission-issued edict, is where lunch used to be. What if there are more Republicans than Democrats on that committee? Republicans want to cut stuff out, reduce stuff like spending and government in general? A committee Republican might say, "I make a motion to reduce the 24-hour day to 23 hours, thus saving stuff like printing on plane and train schedules, and when 'Dexter' and 'Weeds' come on the TV." All in favor, etc., etc.
ADVERTISEMENT
Which hour will they cut out? I'm worried that they'll cut out lunch altogether, which would allow supper to crash into breakfast. Oh, you say, they won't do that.
They won't? If you're so smart, then tell me who's in charge of Staylight Savings Time? Yeah, that's what I mean. That commission is so buried in big government that no one knows where they are, if they did want to complain. It's certainly not hard to understand their desire to remain hidden. I don't know anyone who isn't confused about this time stuff. Their phone would ring off the hook. We'd all be calling to find out what time it really is.
The last thing about all this that really has me upset is I can't figure out if I'm an hour older, or an hour younger. You know, of course, that the astronauts, because they circle the earth repeatedly at speeds around 18,000 mph, and because Einstein proved that time slows as one speeds up, are approximately one one-hundredth of a second younger when we bring them back to Earth.
So don't tell me you cannot lose an hour here or there. Time goes fast.
It'll slip right away on you.
