Time giveth and time taketh away - mostly an hour of sleep

The Sunday Column

OPINION / HUMOR – I hate daylight savings, and I don’t care which is the real one. Actually, let me rephrase that because I’ll take some hate from the usual suspects for using the word hate, even though it’s referring to an event and they use it all the time, but – I .. no, nevermind, I hate daylight savings time. I don’t feel like looking up which is the original and which isn’t. Just pick one and let’s move on.

We obviously don’t really need it… regardless of what ‘they’ say – and when I say ‘they’ I mean everyone that made it possible, and keeps it in place.

Obviously, the world survived without it for – well, forever.

Ancient Greece and Rome didn’t set their sundials back or forward an hour. I don’t remember reading about the Renaissance citizens recalibrating their grandfather clocks for such a thing, and during the days of the Wild West – how embarrassing would it be if you were supposed to participate in a Noon showdown and got there an hour early or an hour late because you forgot to set your pocket watch before you got sloshed the night before at the local saloon and passed out behind the water trough for the horses.

Fates could have been changed forever, altering the course of history if Wyatt Earp had been an hour late and thus branded a coward just because he forgot to change his clock.

Sure, now days we basically use our smartphones, and they change the time for us, but that wasn’t always the case.

I’ll be the first to admit I showed up to a college class an hour early one time – and so did half the classes on campus that morning because college kids went all day Sunday not caring or thinking about it and there we were like a bunch of morons wondering where our professor was. Yeah, that actually happened quite often on college and university campuses all across America before The iPhone was released in 2007. Twenty-five years ago, it was a different world.

Don’t scoff and judge me because you suddenly forgot that time you did something similar; maybe your whole family showed up to church an hour early or an hour late… yeah, now the memory is coming back, so hold your judgement and let the he or she without flaws cast the first stone (or the delusional ones whom think they have no flaws, do the judging).

‘They’ (there’s that mysterious word again) won’t admit it but I think it had to do with television programming. It’s no coincidence that suddenly by the 1960’s television was the hot commodity and if it was daylight outside there wasn’t anyone snuggled up inside watching the T.V. and suddenly ‘they’ decide we need this daylight savings thing for the crops and whatever.

It’s a miracle humanity survived as long as it did until they saved us with Daylight Savings Time.

But now, that we're all spoiled little assholes, and even homeless people have smartphones and complain how capitalism has destroyed their lives as they finish off their mocha cappe frappe locha from the local Starbucks they bought while wearing their designer sweater and check their TikTok for any new likes, ranting how much they hate America, we don’t really need to change the clocks because food comes magically from out of the sky, on little plastic cards and it serves no purpose because people aren’t watching Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News at 6:30 p.m. while it’s black as night outside since 5:09 p.m., Wheel of Fortune is up next, followed by Jeopardy and then it’s an all new block of prime time T.V. shows, with Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens and probably Dallas was on after that (pretty sure that show started before I was born and continued until I was a teenager, who knows). People aren’t watching traditional television like they used to, it’s all on their phones and tablets or streaming apps on their 65” Vizios or whatever.

The sad part is, no matter how much you love your church, you don’t have an excuse to miss it once or twice a year anymore ever since that smartass nerd know-it-all you call your phone ruined it for everyone.

Let’s be fair and admit that daylight savings time was tried several times before, and repealed by law. Once in 1918 and again during World War Two, (So, you don’t think I’m blaming the television lobbyist) but ever since 1966 it’s been the standard and never stopped.

Get rid of the thing.

Smart phones ruined it for everyone anyways. Food is still gonna food, church is still gonna church, work is still gonna work and people are still gonna figure out a way to try to get out of something no matter what time it is. That’s just how it goes. It’s the nature of the beast.

Where’s the No Time Change rallies? I think that would be a more productive use of anyone’s …. time… (see what I did there) and could … change … something for the betterment of all mankind one last time. But I digress (like the clocks did last night) so let me just say in closing I don’t like Daylight Savings Time – if you haven’t noticed.

I’m interested in knowing how you feel about it, too.  Please share your thoughts with me by commenting, or posting on social media, or email me directly, at Chuck@shelbyinddependent.com.

Post Script: The extra hour of sleep is nice, but you’re gonna give that back in March when you have to wake up an hour early, and remember that you’ll just be grumpy for a couple of weeks. And, this current time is actually the real time, (during the winter) so that throws my prime time TV conspiracy idea out of the window, but it was fun to read and wonder if it was true, if only for a moment.

Seriously though, what’s the point? – don’t answer that; I don’t want to know.

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