Central Standard / Daylight Savings Time

I hate changing to and from Daylight Savings Time.

It heralds the beginning of flu season, caused by the stress of not sleeping correctly. It messes up children’s body clocks and hinders them from learning, even when they have the extra hour to sleep in the fall. I know it puts my body clock out of synch, and I am convinced that I am not the only adult to whom this happens.

It was probably a good idea at the time, during the last “good” war when a paternalistic government gave workers more daylight in which to play after their shifts at war industries making the products that helped us win WW II. It allowed children more time to play in the daylight after school in the good old days when they didn’t have two hours of homework every night beginning in third grade, and when they weren’t thralls to video games and the television.

Farmers never liked the time change. My late Uncle Acen (who died in 1967) never changed the clocks on his farm in Central Illinois near Arcola. Rather, he kept them on “God’s time.” He always said the cows didn’t know if it were daylight savings time or not, they just kept on their own schedule and needed to be milked when they needed to be milked. Ironically, he grew broom corn, which migrant workers from Oklahoma harvested each fall. He and my Aunt Edith, my father’s eldest sister, didn’t have livestock except for the occasional beef steer, some gigantic hogs, a few geese for Christmas, a smattering of chickens for eggs, and a German Shepherd named Bernice.

Nor did they have running water in the house. There was a hand pump at the kitchen sink and a reservoir on the wood stove in the kitchen they kept filled for hot water. When they needed to wash themselves, they would undress except for a robe, go outside and open bulkhead to cellar, go down the steps, and then stand under the reservoir in the kitchen, pull a chain and shower. Briefly.

(Uncle Acen was a curmudgeon, and so am I. He was not my role model, however. I somehow just grew into the job.)

Sometimes after a time change it takes me a couple months to change all the clocks in the house. The digital ones are harder than the ones with hands, except for our antique clocks which cannot be turned backward without breaking the works or forward too fast because the chimes go fonky. The ones in the cars are easier than they used to be, but I still need to get out the manual to figure it out. I don’t wear a watch, but the digital ones used to drive me insane because I’d lose the directions and only certain males under the age of sixteen could figure out how to adjust the time on them.

On the first day after a time change I wake up on my previous time no matter when I went to bed the night before. By the third day I am a wreck. This morning I poured cream all over the counter instead of into my coffee. I slopped coffee on my hand and robe because I couldn’t manage the cup correctly. If I follow true to form, I’ll be fine by the end of the week, but revert the second week. After that I find a routine. When I was teaching, my students were worse the second week, too. I can’t imagine what happens to automobile mechanics or Air Traffic Controllers if they have the same reactions I do (there’s a horror show in the making!).

I do have an idea. While we could do away with changing time altogether, I don’t think that would solve the problem.

What I believe we ought to do is split the difference.

WHAT? Turn the clocks ahead half an hour once in the spring and never touch them again? Am I crazy!

The idea is not without precedent. India is on a single time zone, with the time based on the center (east to west) of the country. That puts it ten hours and thirty minutes later than Central Standard Time. Thus when it’s noon here, it’s 10:30 in the evening there. Is this a problem? For some people, no doubt it is. But most manage to adjust. On the bright side, if we switched our time by 30 minutes, all those out-sourced workers who answer our computer questions might have it easier figuring out when to call us back after we’ve been put into the telephone queue.

If we changed the time in the United States by 30 minutes past Standard Time, we would still have time zones, but we would never have to adjust our bodies, or our clocks and watches, again. Schools might change the time they start and stop. They do it all the time. Businesses could also adjust, and save money because they would adjust the time only once.

And if we never fiddled with the settings on clocks, despite not being on “God’s time,” even Uncle Acen might approve.

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