Beat the Clock

It's coming up on that time of year again. Yep, it's only a few days away. You know what I'm talking about - cooler temperatures, crisp falling leaves, costumes, decorated pumpkins. That's right, it's Daylight Savings Time again.

No, it's not the sweet-and-sour DST of the Spring where we lose an hour. It's the woolly-sock comfort of gaining an extra hour. Ask anyone about DST (except for those iconoclasts in Arizona and parts of Indiana), and they'll say "Yep, we get an extra hour of sleep." No one ever says, "Hey! An extra hour of daylight! Let's all detail the car or paint the fence!" We are creatures of comfort and nothing is quite so comforting as prying open a bloodshot eye with the rest of your face buried in the pillow and thinking, "Hot damn! I still have another hour!" It's not like we get any real use out of that hour. Most of us will still get up and kick-start our bodies into action. We'll make the coffee, read the paper, take up residence in the bathroom for a while, flip through the channels on TV, take a few stabs at the crossword, have more coffee, go back into the bathroom and then realize you pissed away most of your Sunday. As usual.

Like a lot of people, I always set my clock ahead. For some reason, we think we're cheating our Circadian Rhythms and buffering in that extra time to make us feel we have a jump start on our day. Give me a break. Some people take that opportunity to squeeze out a few extra minutes of shut-eye...and promptly end up falling into a deep sleep, waking up in a spastic panic and rushing to work with their hair in a ponytail or smothered in styling gel because they didn't have time to shower. Others realize the literal translation that five minutes was supposed to bring and can quickly (and subconsciously) do the math that 6:00 am actually equals 5:55 am. What recourse do these junior varsity math team wizards have? Why, set the clock ahead by TEN minutes, of course. Feeling slightly superior with 10 extra minutes to their day, they don't realize that their lives are one constant deja vu (forgive the lack of accents, but my laptop doesn't speak French).

Being one of those clock-setter-ahead-ers, I thought I'd take it to the next level. Every time I moved the clock, unplugged it or the power went out because nature hates me and battered me with a violent storm, I would keep setting the clock ahead a little bit more. And a little bit more. And even more, until, after a year, my clock was ahead by two hours and thirty-seven minutes (seriously). Yet, I STILL compensated in my brain when I woke up, saw the clock read 9:15 and almost automatically calculated that it was 6:38. I kept setting it so far ahead that I traveled through time. As of this writing, I am currently living in the distant future. Please send me $1,000 and I will provide you with stock tips, winning lottery numbers and the next several World Series winners. Supermodels only, please.

Usually, there will be some knucklehead at work who will claim, "I just got used to setting my clock ahead - now we have to turn our clocks back again!" and chuckle that annoying self-satisfied chuckle that only the A-List sycophantic brown-nosers can give. It's enough to make you want to set them on fire and light a Cuban cigar off their burning bodies. But that would be wrong. After all, Cuban cigars are still illegal in this country.

I never could quite get the hang of the future ramifications of DST. Let me explain. When pondering what effect setting my clock back another hour would provide, I'm stumped. I have loads of questions. Will the mornings be darker? Lighter? Will it be pitch black when I leave the office now? Will the local vampire community have extended dining hours? Do I look fat in these jeans?

You have probably noticed that I seamlessly transitioned from calling "Daylight Savings Time" to the more economical "DST". You probably also noticed that DST sounds like something a sailor would come home with after a year at sea with monthly visits to the flesh pots of Thailand:

Sergeant: "Say, private,* I hear you have a nasty case of DST"

Private: "It's nothin', Sarge. Got some ointment for that."

Major: "Maybe you should have kept your privates private, private."

Private: "It's nothing major, Major."

Captain: "That's admirable, private. Still, you should see a specialist for that discharge."

Private: "For something so petty?"

Colonel: "You could be a carrier, son"

Private: "Will you be able to get someone to sub for me?"

Admiral: "Replacing privates is our business, son...in general."

* - No, I have no idea how military ranks work in the Navy

And what about those stores that are open 24 hours a day when there's an extra hour to account for? Do they have to close for an hour? Hell, if it's late night and I'm in my pajamas with my fuzzy slippers on and a bloodlust for a heavily-blistered chili dog, I'm not going to want to spend 60 minutes yelling at the cashier to open the damn doors while he grabs his crotch and shakes it at me, making comments about the circumstances of my birth. No, I'll just haul my carcass back to the house, get back in bed, set the clock ahead five more minutes, and go to sleep.

For another hour.