Spring ahead, fall down

So, I set my clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time—wait a minute (pun)—it will really take me at least a week to get all of the clocks in my life set to the right time. There are the bedside clocks, the stove clock, the 24-in clock, the decorative clocks, the mantel clock, the microwave clock, my watch, the clock in the car, the clock at work, and some I haven’t thought of just now.

Some of them approach rocket-science skill levels to set, and for some of them I will need a chair to stand on. Some of the low priority clocks just might have to wait six months (I guess it is more than that now) to be correct again.

After the clock-setting ritual, I will have to be watchful for a few days. Father Butterbean thinks that he can trick me into being on time if he sets the clocks ten minutes ahead. So I have to figure out which clocks are on time and which ones are set ahead so I will know when to subtract ten minutes and when not to. Don’t experts tell us to simplify our lives? And don’t think that I can subtract correctly all of the time. I get cranky and tell Mr. B. that I want to know what time it is, not what time it isn’t.

Speaking of experts and time, a young friend of mine told me about a study that was done to try to determine which nations and which cultures were more productive. It sounds like warped Bertha-logic to me, but they sent observers out to different cities in the world and stationed them in business districts. Their study criteria were: how quickly people walked a certain distance, how many of the clocks in the city were correct, and the length of time it took a public servant to complete a task.

Well, what do you think? Just checking. Keep on thinking.

Now if I were to use those criteria to measure my productivity, the results of my study would be skewed to say the least. First of all, I can’t walk as fast as I used to, especially if I have been sitting (not doing nothing, by the way) for a while. Second, Mr. B. sabotages my productivity scores by deliberately setting the clocks ahead; and third, no one could fairly measure the time it takes me to complete a task, because I am always working on at least three of them at one time. (Okay, I didn’t say I was doing them right.)

Interesting as that study is, I feel free to pitch it, part and parcel—especially the part about clocks being set to the correct time. I beg your pardon, but I walk slow no matter what my clock says.

My physiological clock is something else again. If I were to set 50 clocks ahead by one hour, my internal clock would still not get the message and never quite catch up. There is something about getting up in the dark. I am in good company. though; small children and animals don’t adjust so well to fiddling around with the clocks either. They can’t tell time and can’t subtract (or is it add?) an hour and conclude, "It’s really only six o’clock."

I understand from the ten o’clock news (it’s really the 11 o’clock news now) that the reason they, Congress, moved Daylight Savings Time up by three weeks was to conserve energy, not yours or mine, but ours. There was a study which suggested that in Australia, energy was indeed saved by doing just that. I don’t know what the model was, but the Good Lord only gave us so many daylight hours. Try as we might, we aren’t going to be manufacturing any more except by turning the lights on. It doesn’t matter whether we stay up later or get up earlier, it’s all the same. So a new study done after a year of the longer, better, DST season shows that, instead of saving, we are using more energy. Hmm…those darn studies.

Are you still thinking about that productivity study? Have you guessed which country scored the highest? How about the one most noted for superior timepieces? That would be Switzerland. Having your clocks set precisely on time must stand for something. I don’t know for sure what, but Mr. B. should take notice just in case it’s productivity.