Keep ‘sleep thieves’ away from that hour hand

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/03/2021 (1962 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I am not in tip-top shape this morning, as you can probably deduce from the chain of drool dangling from my mouth and the fact I am using toothpicks to keep my eyelids from slamming shut.

The problem — and it was not supposed to happen this year — is that yesterday, on the second Sunday in March, the government forced us once again to “spring forward” and revert to daylight time, wherein we set our (bad word) clocks ahead by an entire hour, which, for those of you who remember Grade 5 math, means we got an hour less sleep.

We, as a nation, have been forced to do this for more than 100 years because THE GOVERNMENT HATES US!

I am not kidding around here in a lighthearted manner. What is especially frustrating is that last year, amid the pandemic, it looked as though the world was coming to its senses and would finally abandon this twice-a-year time flip-flop and prevent innocent citizens such as myself from nodding off in our morning oatmeal.

This demonic time change seemed doomed in 2020 after provincial governments in Ontario and British Columbia pledged to simply make daylight time permanent, and after Quebec and New Brunswick hinted at doing the same.

Unfortunately, however, the changeover proceeded as normal on Sunday and we are all walking around like zombies again, because those provinces are waiting for each other and their nearby states to make the change first. Consider this: California is still moving into and out of daylight time, and that means B.C. is, too. The same goes for Ontario and Quebec, which are waiting on each other and New York state to be the first with the guts to make the switch.

Why are they just staring at each other with laser-like intensity and refusing to stop the madness, so to speak? Allow me to try and explain using a strange yet true incident drawn from my very own real and personal life.

Some years ago, when I was still working nights at this newspaper, I returned home in the wee hours, flicked on the lights in the kitchen and was confronted with a terrifying sight — there, on our kitchen counter, eyeing a plate of my wife’s freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, was a very hungry mouse.

It would be an understatement to say we were both caught flat-footed, assuming mice have flat feet. Instead of the mouse scurrying away and me shrieking like a wounded woodland creature, we both simply stood there.

I stared at the mouse, and the mouse stared at me, though he did keep one tiny paw within striking distance of the cookies. As the minutes ticked away, a thought occurred to me — neither one of us wants to make the first move, because a mistake could have disastrous consequences.

In the end, I bravely took a step forward, which prompted the mouse to sprint away, abandoning the cookies and vanishing behind our refrigerator.

OK, I hope everyone understands now why we are still stuck using daylight time. For the record, the mouse in the story represented all the cowardly provinces, whereas I was the evil, uncaring government, and the cookie symbolized the delicious hour of sleep that we (bad word) lose every year.

In all honesty, I have lost track of the number of columns I have written wherein I vent my spleen over the foolishness of changing our clocks twice a year.

The general idea behind daylight time is that instead of sleeping through an hour of sunlight in the morning, we move our clocks ahead one hour to make more productive use of the sunlight we get. In the fall, when the daylight hours are reduced, clocks are set back an hour so we get more sunlight in the morning.

What happens to the hour that we lost on Sunday, which became the shortest day of the year with only 23 hours? Well, the government insists you get that hour back in October when we are forced to “fall back” — pushing the clocks back an entire hour — and revert to standard time.

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I do not believe the government when they tell us we get that hour of sleep back. No, I believe the government is keeping all those hours and hoarding them in some kind of special vault until they get enough and all the politicians have a massive “sleepfest” (just watch Question Period if you don’t believe me) wherein they enjoy all those hours stolen from innocent, bleary-eyed taxpayers.

As a crusading columnist, I have argued for years that we should just pick one time — daylight or standard — and stick with it for the entire year, because I am sick and tired of losing the thing I love the most — a good night’s sleep.

Seriously, if sleeping were an Olympic sport — assuming we ever have the Olympics again — I would run away (or just remain motionless) with the gold medal.

I have a lot more deep thoughts on the need to stamp out daylight time, but I don’t have time to share them with you right now, because — “Hickory Dickory EEK!” — I don’t like the way that mouse on the kitchen counter is looking at me.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca