Time change
This coming Sunday, we will “roll forward” into spring. We’ll turn our clocks forward during the night on Saturday night and thereby lose an hour of sleep. In case you are confused by this procedure, you will be waking up earlier. Whereas the sun came up at 7 a.m. this week, it will be coming up at 8 a.m. next week. So, we will be getting up in the dark.
Those who have been getting up really early to brave the traffic going into the city or to milk the cows or check the pumps on the oil wells … will be getting up in the middle of the night … or maybe the night before. Since the sun will be shining later in the evening, you will probably be staying up longer … exercising, mowing down the early spring weeds, or swinging on the porch. Whatever you are doing, the sun hanging around for another hour every evening will keep you from going to bed earlier.
The net outcome of all this is a lack of sleep. We are not just losing an hour … on Saturday night. We are losing an hour every night. Within a month, the days will be significantly longer, causing us to be in the dark … sleeping peacefully even less. Of course, the farmers can stay in their fields longer, the gardeners will be able to get something done in the evening, and the parents of little leaguers will be able to attend four practices and two games a week … instead of resting at home in the house, listening to the kids read and catching up on the news.
Although we have been conditioned by our ancestors to work from sun to sun, we all know that we must get up even earlier to get credit for our labors. We all know that someone who sleeps till noon isn’t pulling his part of the load. Even if he works through the night on a project, cures cancer, and folds all the laundry for a week … he will not admit to sleeping until ten or later.
It wasn’t the same when we were kids. That’s because we didn’t change the clocks back in those days. I don’t remember ever thinking that the sun came up early or that sunset was early or late … until back in the late 1960s when the government decided to help us out.
I was in college and visited a country church that first Sunday after the “rolling forward.” The elders were in a snit over when to have Sunday evening services. If they had it at “God’s time,” they would arrive late in the afternoon and get out after dark … just in time to go home to bed. If they had it on “new time,” they’d get out with the sun shining and nothing to do. After much discussion, it was decided that they would use the “new time,” but start an hour later. There was no plan for the fall services on Sunday nights. One old man said he was going to keep the clock in the back room set to “God’s time” just so he wouldn’t lose track of reality.
Well, reality has moved to the back room again, and we’ve got to change the clocks on Saturday night. Be ready.
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