Daylight time isn’t worth losing sleep over

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/03/2019 (2695 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Would you like to know how I began my morning? Don’t bother answering that, because I’m going to tell you, no matter what you say.

I began my morning pouring milk into the cutlery drawer instead of on top of my sugary cereal. Then, instead of a slice of rye bread, I managed to stuff my hand into the toaster slot.

I sat there staring at the coffee pot for about 20 minutes until I realized it wasn’t even plugged in.

Next, I ran the water for my morning bath, sat down at the computer and forgot all about it, which resulted in the (bad word) tub overflowing.

When I attempted to toss my laptop into the trunk, I accidentally tossed my car keys in along with the computer, which means I had to find another set of emergency keys to rescue the first set.

Fortunately, none of this is my fault. Would you like to know whose fault it is? I’d be happy to tell you. All of this is — hold on while I activate the caps lock feature on my keyboard — THE GOVERNMENT’S FAULT!

I will try to explain, although I doubt you will understand because I can tell by your bleary-eyed expressions that you will not be able to read today’s hard-hitting column unless you first get some toothpicks to prop up your droopy eyelids.

What I’m trying to say is that I am not operating at peak efficiency this morning because the (extremely bad word) government has deprived me of the one thing I value above all else — a good night’s sleep.

Unless you have been in a coma for the past week — and that’s a distinct possibility — you will recall that yesterday, on the second Sunday in March, we were forced to “spring forward” and revert to daylight time, wherein we are compelled by you know who to set our clocks ahead by an entire hour.

If you failed Grade 5 math or live in Saskatchewan, where they don’t spring forward or fall back, setting our clocks ahead by an hour means that we (and this includes you) get an hour less sleep.

You are probably wondering why they make us do this every spring. That is an excellent question. The reason they steal an hour of sleep is because — hold on while I once again activate the caps lock feature — THE GOVERNMENT HATES US!

You think I’m kidding around in a light-hearted manner simply for comical effect, don’t you? Ha ha ha! Well, I’m not. Think about it for a moment, or do that when you have injected enough caffeine into your sleep-deprived brain.

By depriving us of an hour of sleep on a regular basis, the government is able to keep us, the dozy members of the voting public, in a permanent state of confusion, which means they can pretty much do whatever they want because they know we are way too tired to notice.

One of the things I hate most about the switch to daylight time is the cutesy terminology they use to describe it. They always remind us to, and I will quote them directly, “spring forward” as though we were a row of fuzzy Easter bunnies getting ready to hop, hop, hop down the bunny trail, so to speak.

They always forget to tell us that, according to dozens of scientific studies, “springing forward” and losing an hour of sleep is bad for our health in the sense it increases our risk of having heart attacks and strokes and punching a Starbucks barista in the head because they forgot to put extra foam on our grande latte, if you can imagine.

In my case, being dozy on the days after the time change isn’t usually lethal, because few people die because of a misplaced semicolon. But there are some jobs that you should definitely not attempt right after the spring switch.

Surgeon: “Oops! Nurse, can you remind me which one is the spleen and which one is the pancreas?”

Airline pilot: “Hi, this is your captain speaking, if you look out your right-hand window, you will notice that mountain is getting closer and closer every second. Weird, eh?”

I do not know about you, but I am at the stage of life where I can’t afford to lose an entire hour of sleep, because I currently get almost no sleep at all, partly because we have two dogs that snore like freight trains in our bed, and partly because I have to visit the washroom roughly six times a night.

At the best of times, I am irritable and cranky, but when I am deprived of an hour of sleep every spring, I become a borderline serial killer, just like store clerks forced to listen to Jingle Bells on a continuous loop starting before Halloween are more likely to strangle you with a festive ribbon, or beat you to death with a decorative novelty candy cane.

The government (we talked about them earlier) tell us we should be grateful for getting an extra hour of daylight during the evening to engage in fun activities, such as getting in car crashes (which increase after the time change) or goofing around on the internet (which also increases for some reason).

The truth is, the only fun activity most of us want to engage in at this time of year is springing back into bed as early as possible because the bags under our eyes are bigger than airport luggage.

It’s time to take action! It’s time to halt this government conspiracy that deprives us of our democratic right to lie in bed for as long as we want. I urge everyone within the sound of my voice to get in touch with their nearest politician, and tell them to stop the madness.

They’ll probably just sleep on it.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca