It's about time...

            I don’t handle change well. I’ll be the second to admit that. My wife will be the first. So it is with much trepidation that I face the bi-annual time change that we experience every March and November. I never know for sure if we are going on daylight saving time or off of it, just like I can never remember if I am going to gain an hour of sleep or lose one.

            We have two clocks in our bedroom, one on the dresser that my wife is in charge of, which she changes twice a year whenever whoever decides such things decides it’s time to change it, and one by my night stand that never changes, regardless of what anybody else says. Part of the time the one on my night stand agrees with the one on the dresser, and part of the time it’s an hour ahead of it.

            I wake up about the same time every morning, regardless of what time either clock says it is. I use the one on my night stand to tell what time my body thinks it is, and the one on the dresser to tell what time the coffee shop opens. My Dad says that neither clock is right. He says we’re always one hour or two hours ahead of sun time, the correct time. Or maybe he said we’re one or two hours behind.

            Regardless, I’m glad we are entering the period where both bedroom clocks are the same, even if the clock in the wife’s delivery van won’t agree with my cell phone for the next few months. Every once in a while the federal government or the state government changes the rules about changing the time, and my cell phone and Susan’s car seem to know about the changes and adapt automatically, but my truck and that old van are at the mercy of whatever buttons I can figure out to push.

            The last time Indiana decided to go on daylight saving time, Mitch Daniels was governor, and he was concerned Hoosier manufacturers and retailers wouldn’t be able to do business with neighboring states if they switched time and Indiana didn’t. I guess he made a convincing argument, being that we switched and all, but then he ran over to Japan and South Korea to work out some trade deals with them. I wrote him a letter to explain that those countries weren’t on the same time as us, and sometimes they weren’t even on the same day as us. I never received a reply, though. I suspect he was too busy golfing after work with all the extra daylight he had saved.

            I’ve read reports that most people like daylight saving time, and I’ve read reports that most people don’t like it. I’ve also read reports that it saves energy and that it doesn’t, and that it’s healthier for us and that it isn’t. I don’t know who’s correct.

            But I’m going to go to bed when I get tired, and get up when it’s time to get up.

            And I’ll go get a cup of coffee when the coffee shop opens.

            And the government still won’t even know what time it really is.

            Some things never change.