O Unifying DST

It's that time of year again! Last night we saw 1am twice (Or 2am? I was actually asleep, so I missed it!) and we all relished that extra hour of sleep that was so rudely stolen from us back in March. Well, some of us relished it. Likely the people who didn't have kids who just woke them up an hour earlier than had been the usual wake up for the past eight months.

Being a Hoosier, Daylight Saving Time is a relatively new experience for me. We didn't jump on the bandwagon until 2006, so I was an adult, and it really threw me off those first few years. While I'm used to it now and not so bothered by it since my kids are older and we homeschool (homeschooling offers a perfect schedule for people who have a hard time with schedules,) still every year at this time when we "fall back," I feel like my internal clock is snapped back to normalcy. I don't mind the sun going down so early and I love the earlier sunrises. This is the time when my body rhythm is peaceful again after feeling off all summer, even though it's more subconscious these last few years than it was when DST was first introduced.

Even though I'm used to it, though, I still think Daylight Saving Time is dumb. I think it's a silly practice and while Ben Franklin seems to have been a brilliant person in many matters, this one idea I consider an epic fail. Every year on the dates of falling back or springing forward my husband recites the Native American bit about the blanket-- "Only a white man would think that by cutting off the top of a blanket and sewing the piece back onto the bottom you'd get a longer blanket." I don't know if that's exactly how it goes or even where it came from, but it's so true!

HOWEVER, there's a bright side!

--Oh! Last night I read this article (ahem, "article" might be a stretch) on Facebook about how people who are always late are not actually terrible humans, but we are OPTIMISTS and ENTHUSIASTS! We tend to remember only successes, even if they were few, and forget about the massive piles of failures we've collected in trying to squeeze too many activities into a limited amount of time. We live in the moment! And get this--we are MORE SUCCESSFUL (I really can't understand how that's possible) and WE WILL LIVE LONGER than all you timely pessimists! Which really just means all of humanity has to put up with our tardiness for an extra long time. Tee hee! Sorry!

Oh gosh, last night I was supposed to play a show from 7-8:30. And we really would have been on time, everything was going well, but then my friend showed up and she had randomly adopted a dog from the animal shelter that day! And it was hard to leave. (She got this dog and said it was a "boxer mix of some sort," and it was CLEARLY a boxer/pit bull, and it was growling at us so much that we just admired it through the screen door. I'm not saying I don't like Pit bulls, but the stereotype irony of the situation was hilarious.) Anyway, I ran up the steps to play the show at 7:05 while the (albeit small) audience just quietly stared at me as I frantically unpacked my instruments and hoped none of my dress buttons had come undone during my frazzled run.

Where the heck was I? Oh yes, unifying events. Remember how the Solar Eclipse this summer really brought people together? The whole country was so excited and very few of us had experienced it before and it was so neat and unifying. Well, that's kind of how Daylight Saving Time is, except it's twice a year! It's practically like Christmas! We wake up one morning in March and share our yawns and gripes about losing an hour of our lives over social media. "WHAT IF I DIE THIS SUMMER," we say, "I'LL HAVE LOST THAT HOUR OF MY LIFE FOREVER." Since it's always on a Sunday that the clocks change, on that fateful Sunday in Spring EVERYBODY is late for church. I mean, everybody. One of the first years of Indiana being on DST we actually missed like four Masses throughout the day because we just could not get it right. And we didn't know if we'd gone backward or forward. It was very confusing. (This was before we had smart phones that switched automatically for us.) Some years I wouldn't change the clocks at all, I'd just do the math in my head for the off months. (That was a bad idea, I don't suggest trying it.) And there are so many clocks! Just today I saw a friend posting on Facebook that she was staying at a friend's house and didn't know if the clocks had been changed and what time was it really?! We've all been there. These are unifying experiences.

And then in the fall, when we gain back that hour, we are all so joyous and on time for everything, possibly even early! Sometimes a whole hour early, haha! We still gripe together on social media, of course. "Little Johnnycakes woke up at 5:00 instead of 6:00. Doesn't understand DST. I'LL NEVER GET MY LOST HOUR BACK." More yawns in parental unison. *sigh* It's so hard.

Now, you might think that where I'm going with all this is to advise that we all embrace DST and be happy that it's something a nation can experience together and stop whining so much about it. Not quite! I'm not going to suggest than anyone stop complaining about Daylight Saving Time. That's exactly what's so unifying about it! Instead, I'm going to ask that we recognize our vexation and celebrate it! Fix up some hot buttered rum and toast with the rest of the perturbed, yawning citizens of Standard Time Zones across the nation--Daylight Saving Time knows no race, religion, or political party! Daylight Saving Time is nondiscriminatory! Cheers to Daylight Saving Time, the best worst thing to ever happen to a Nation!

***RECIPE FOR HOT BUTTERED RUM***
Per mug:
-Dash each of Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Allspice
-Spoonful of Brown Sugar
-Thin pat of Butter
-1 Jigger of Spiced Rum
-Add Hot Water to fill mug and stir.
(personally I prefer a tad more rum and a tad less butter)

Enjoy!