Daylight Saving Time

Each spring, when the clocks change, I always seem to lose my hour at the most inopportune time. While officially the 2 AM hour disappears each year, the time change usually sneaks up on me in a manner that causes it to take me by surprise when I show up an hour late for something. I had one year where I was trying to get to a gig a half-hour early and wound up being a half-hour late. The worst was the year I was in Paris during the spring semester. Each Sunday, I would go to the latin quarter and watch The Simpsons at an anglophone bar that had a British satellite TV hook-up. I have since then broken my dependence on The Simpsons, although at that point it had a pretty powerful hold on my life. Each week, I would get a "sandwiche grecque" and a Coke and get my Simpsons fix. On that particular day, I was planning on watching at least some of The Simpsons at 6, and then going to a dinner party at my friend's fantastic Parisian duplex apartment by around 7. When I arrived at the bar, I found out that not only had The Simpsons ended, but I was also late for the dinner party. I remember calling my friend up from a pay phone, since my cell phone had been stolen a week or two earlier, and asking her what time it was. Everyone on her end was laughing at how ridiculous this question was. The worst part was that I had essentially wasted the entire day sitting around my apartment on a beautiful spring day.

Recently, there has been lots of warning for daylight saving time. Apparently, the media found it necessary this year to do multiple stories about why we have daylight saving time, and also to point out that there is no "s" at the end of "saving." This is a common mistake that I have always made, as well as everyone I know. It's not something that has ever bothered me, as opposed to the "s" some rogues feel they need to attach to the end of "anyway." But now that I have been informed, and I am beginning to train myself in this arbitrary correctness, I'm sure I will begin too feel annoyance whenever someone refers to it as "daylight savingS time." Or perhaps I'll simply rebel against the oppressive language establishment at make it a point to always us the extra "s." Either way, I've had no problem remembering the time change, although I do miss the occasional displacement that I feel when I realize that I've been walking around in my own personal time zone while everyone else is in a totally different hour and thinks nothing of it at all. It makes one wonder how arbitrary time is and how as humans, maybe we are better adapted to sleep and wake with the sun. But then I remember how inconvenient it is to wear a sundial around my wrist. Might as well drop it and just focus on getting to where I need to go on time, whether or not I have any idea what time it actually is.