Monday, March 14, 2016

Changing the clocks

Never been a big deal for me - except when I forgot. After a couple days of  "Wow, it's still light." or "Is it dark already?" I adjust to either.

I don't doubt there are people for whom the one hour switch can be more traumatic but there's a part of me that also thinks that any small inconvenience is too much to bear for some folks. What's the problem? You move the clocks ahead, you set them back. If you were to drive to California from here you'd have to set your clock back three times. You ever hear anyone bitch about that?

It always amused me, though, that there was an official time to change the clocks, something like 2:11 am. Who gets to decide that? I suppose it's important for computers and lots of other things that are time regulated that the switch happen at an agreed upon time, but why not midnight or on some other hour?

When my kids were small I tried to sell them on the idea of a tradition of time change ceremony. I told them the time would change at 2:17 in the night and that I'd get them up so we could do the time change ceremony, saying good bye to winter and welcoming the spring and the summer with candles and song and a ceremonial procession around the yard. In the fall it would be to thank the season for the harvest and hope for a mild winter.

Even when they were small I could never pull it off.

"Why don't you just change the clocks before we go to bed?"

And that's what I do.

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