Daylight Crazy Time

One of my favorite songs from my youth was "Does Anybody Really Knows What Time It Is?" (by Chicago). And today--the first day of DST--anybody's guess is as good as mine. How many people showed up at church just as the benediction was being pronounced? Arrived an hour late for work? Or, like me, are just off-kilter today?

I suppose that there *are* people in the world who merrily spring forward (I think that's what we were supposed to do) but I'm not one of them. And here's why:

1. I don't spring anywhere. I'm having knee surgery again, though, and hopefully that will aid my springability.
2. I don't know about spring forward/backward and fall forward/backward. First off, I have to decide which we're doing. I can get the spring/fall business just fine, but the forward/backward stuff? Could we a bit more helpful, please? I have fallen forward (see knee surgery above) and I have definitely sprung backwards (hello, little mouse last year!).

Plus I don't do this merrily at all. I'm a bit cranky today because I had to find all the clocks that don't automatically reset themselves, and ignore the ones that do reset themselves, and hope that I haven't forgotten any of them. It's like "Sleeping Beauty" but instead of forgetting a spindle and making the castle sleep for a hundred years, forgetting one clock can make you an hour late for everything.

And if you do the wrong thing with the clock, you can be TWO hours off. For instance, if today at noon I moved the hands backward one hour, I might think it was 11 instead of 1, when actually it's 12, but 12 is now 1.

Oh, the pressure!

Plus I simply don't get why we do this. We don't save *any* daylight. Daylight is daylight, and days come and go despite how you plead for them to slow down or to be brighter or sunnier or whatever.

This just messes up our carefully calibrated Circadian cycles. Today I read an article that says DST contributes to heart attacks when we move the clocks forward...5% increase in the first days of DST!

Someone, please try to convince me that there is some good reason for this. And hurry--I have to change the clock in my car which requires getting out the manual, trying to figure out what it actually means (the manual is, like so many car manuals, apparently written by monkeys), and pushing buttons until the radio is stuck on a grunge station, the heater is on at Vulcan blast level, and the windshield wipers are whipping full tilt. Then I'll give up and call in my teenaged son who will, with a sigh and a 30-second investment of his time, fix it all for me.

You'll have to excuse me if I'm not in the DST fan club.