George Bush Killed My Clock

By Melinda VanLone | Photos

Mar 11
Jasper ponders the time change. Or maybe he's just enjoying the sun.

Jasper ponders the time change. Or maybe he’s just enjoying the sun.

This past weekend, a horrible thing happened. It truly damaged my psyche, and my sleep pattern.

I’m a morning person, and I tend to wake up naturally when the light in the bedroom starts getting brighter. In other words, I’m up with the sun, whenever that may be. My body settles nicely into that sort of rhythm, and gets cranky when anything disrupts it.

I’m now extremely disrupted. You know why. I’m not the only one mentioning it this morning. I’m sure plenty of people arrived at work late, cranky, and wishing they had one more day to sleep and an extra gallon of coffee. They forgot to set their alarm clocks to acknowledge what I consider a travesty…daylight savings time.


Why does daylight need saving?


I’ve read all about why the program was implemented but I can’t bring myself to agree with it. I don’t understand why we can’t just leave time alone. Unless it’s a science fiction novel, or it’s giving me back my youth, I’d rather not mess with it. This particular time change is the worst one…spring forward? Lose an hour? Of my life? For what purpose? Just because they hide it at 2:00 a.m. doesn’t mean I don’t notice. My body complains the second the alarm goes off, and doesn’t stop until we Fall Back. Yes, my body is stubborn. It’s that waking up while it’s still dark thing. I just don’t like it.

Speaking of alarms, to add insult to injury I forgot to change all of the analog clocks yesterday. That means this morning I stumbled around the apartment with bleary eyes trying to figure out what the real time was. I checked the phone, the computer, and the iPad. They all said the same time. I checked the stove, the microwave, and the toaster oven. They all informed me it was an hour earlier. The alarm clock? Was in another world entirely. It not only told me a different hour, but different minutes as well.

The thing to note about this clock is we bought it because it was one of those “no need to set” clocks. It sets itself, the minute you plug it in. Supposedly it reads the time off the atomic clock in the sky. We bought it so that we would never have to worry about re-programming it twice a year. We bought it so that it would always be accurate.

It’s been 10 minutes fast for the past five years.

To add insult to serious first world injury, this fancy, set itself clock did not, in fact, set itself this morning. Why?

Because in its little mind daylight savings hasn’t happened yet. Daylight savings is still happening a few weeks from now, according to this clock. Therefore it stubbornly refuses to change. It will remain an hour off until the moment it considers is the correct daylight savings day, and then it will change and I’ll finally catch up with the rest of the world. This is because George Bush, in 2007, moved daylight savings time to March (instead of April). Supposedly to save on energy. I don’t see any personal energy savings. All I see is I now have to buy a new clock.

I wonder if I can send him a bill?


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