Time Changes Everything

So, wow, do I feel cranky. There’s this crazy thing some places do where people are forced to switch times on the clocks: Spring forward, Fall back. These are places where the official timekeepers decided long ago that it was a good idea to completely mess with the general population on the fundamental question of sleep.

Lots of people don’t understand why daylight saving time was originally set up, but as a child I had been told it was so that farmers had more daylight hours to get chores done. The farmers would also be able to sync any time-driven activities with the non-farming world. Say, if you needed to be at the bank at nine a.m. to stop the foreclosure on your farm, you’d have all that extra daylight to do chores first before heading into town. Those cows don’t milk themselves.

I was, and have to confess I remain, confused by that logic. We had farmers in our family, so I knew that they got up around dawn anyway, regardless of what time the clock showed. I’m pretty sure, even with today’s technology, that farm animals can’t tell time by a clock. Animals got fed and cows got milked as soon as there was enough daylight for my relatives to see what they were doing. They went into town when it was time by the clock to head for their bank meeting, and any remaining chores would get done when they got back from town.

However, current information (aka Wikipedia) has sorted this springing and falling nonsense into a history that tells us it was originally proposed (by Ben Franklin, no less) as an energy saving effort: people would end up with an extra hour of daylight and wouldn’t need to light their candles as early. As a person who is completely in thrall to the technological wonder that is electricity wired into everything, I don’t need a delayed-candle-use accommodation so much these days. What I do need is not to have my circadian rhythm fooled with.

This year, Dr. Nate Watson from Harborview Medical Center in Seattle said “When we go to daylight saving time, it’s like dosing the entire population with an hour of permanent jet lag.” My brain immediately went ding ding ding – this was the perfect explanation for how I feel after springing forward. It’s not like I got up a little earlier than usual and feel a little tired. Rather, it’s like my whole physical being has been put into a tumble dryer and left there for about a week. For teachers and childcare workers, the day after springing forward is one where they can only grit their teeth and power forward through a roomful of severely crabby children.

For those of us who may depend on the luck of the Irish, St. Patrick’s Day comes right after springing forward. Whisky and comfort food go a long way to soothing jet lag.