Time flies along with fly balls

Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?
Since daylight-saving time began anew last weekend, I can’t say that I do.
It all seems so vague anyway. First, let’s call it what it really is. It’s not “daylight-saving time.” It’s “A Baldfaced Attempt to Make My Life Even Harder Time.” Or, at the very least, “Daylight Spending Time.”
Mainly because I’m spending most of my newfound daylight time trying to convince reluctant, small children that they really can go to bed when it’s still light out.
Sleepless. Speaking of going to bed (or not), why does “spring forward” sound so positive when in fact it’s the one that deprives us of sleep?
I don’t “spring” so much as “stagger ” for a full week until I catch up with the idea that what is now 5:30 a.m. was just last week 4:30 a.m.
“Fall back” sounds so ominous, but is obviously coined around the idea that one can “fall back” into the pillows for an extra hour of shut-eye.
What’s not to love about that?
As for me, I would be willing to sleep an extra hour every week if necessary. You know, for the good of the nation and all.
My “savings” is, no doubt, hampered by the fact that I am not a morning person. I am the antithesis of a morning person and often dream of sleeping even while I am still asleep.
Nonetheless, I have found that you have to get up pretty early in the morning to stay ahead of small (and even medium-ish) children.
Since my body is convinced that 5:30 a.m. didn’t just “move” for no reason – despite the fact that it did – we are currently at odds, my body and I, on how early in the whole “early to rise” equation “we” might actually rise.
Who actually decides the whole time-change issue anyway? Was it the result of some 10,000 page report produced at great taxpayer expense by some obscure government subcommittee?
Is it the product of some special “daylight-saving” lobby? Can it be traced back to Enron or Richard Nixon?
Perhaps there is some special worldwide governing body for time that, much like the United Nations, holds obscure meetings and refuses to be accountable to anyone but themselves?
If the latter is true can’t we just ignore it like we do the United Nations?
Myth. In Spring Forward: the Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, author Michael Downing explores the myths and misconceptions that have plagued the annual adjustment of clocks.
What is the No. 1 long-standing myth Downing is eager to debunk? That the concept for daylight-saving time started with farmers who wanted more daylight to work the land.
Wrong! Farmers are our friends and wholly innocent of this nonsense.
When the first daylight-saving plans were proposed, farmers wanted nothing to do with it. Cows, for example, believe in time moving around at whim just about as much as children do – and with the same obstinate results, no doubt.
So if farmers are off the hook then who is to blame?
Downing claims that the other big-time player in the push to spring ahead was Major League Baseball.
See? Long before steroids and $5 beers, baseball was already hard at work churning out lots of really bad ideas.
“(Daylight-saving time) gave working people and school children an opportunity to see the games because there was an extra hour of afternoon light,” Downing said. “The extra hour of light made it possible to finish more tie games. The first year of Daylight Saving (in 1918), the number of tie games went down from 22 to five.”
I see.
So I’m not reeling around in a perpetual violation of my circadian rhythms for no apparent reason. Oh no, I’m forced to put my entire biological sleep pattern on hold for … baseball. Are they kidding me here?
I’ll certainly sleep better at night knowing that? Actually, I won’t. At least until next October when I get that “extra” hour back.
(Kymberly Foster Seabolt likes sleep better than almost anything. She welcomes comment c/o kfs@epohi.com, P.O. Box 38, Salem, OH 44460, or hhttp://userweb.epohi.com/~kseabolt.)