Daylight Saving Time

There are plenty of us, myself included, who have called daylight saving time stupid, a needless holdover whose very reason for existence isn't readily understood by the majority of the population. It's a pain in the ass, people say. Is it spring forward, fall back? Or was that fall forward spring back? Pretty much every adult in a daylight saving time zone of the country has a funny story about being one hour early or late, depending on the time of year.

Regardless of such quibbles, DST — as it's called by those in the know — is here to stay. Beginning Sunday, though, all those people who had still been writing EST — and not EDT — since April were actually in the right, and everyone once again was astonished by how early it gets dark. Happens every year.

Perhaps the strangest phenomenon, though, is that every fall, folks say they feel a bit more rested and easygoing, grateful for that "extra hour" of sleep that kicked in at 2 a.m. Sunday.

Some of us, though, know the extra hour is not to be wasted, taken lightly or slept through. While most of America sleeps, others slink about through dark alleys and otherwise-empty office buildings, getting a jump on the unsuspecting fools snoozing away or stumbling home drunk from a raucous pre-Halloween party. The revolution happens for one hour a year, in that odd hour between 2 a.m. and 2 a.m. on the last Sunday of October.

Don't believe me? Look around. But before you say you still went to the ATM Sunday morning and your paper still showed up on your doorstep and your coffee still tasted the same, think about it. Did the ATM take just a little longer to deliver your cash? Did the neighbors' dog look unusually tired? Why wasn't there any trash in the street? Where was everyone, anyway?

Not that everyone awake from 2 to 2 is a revolutionary. There are elements within this country working to stop what brave men and women have fought for one hour a year for the last 20. I'm but an impartial observer. During my extra hour, I wrote this article while peering out the windows at the folks digging tunnels, laying fiber-optic cable and testing staggering new inventions. Like you, my cat missed the whole thing.

So before you scoff at DST and push for its cessation, remember the revolution. Change is coming, though because the revolution has but one hour a year, its arrival will be incremental and gradual.

One day, 36, 41 or even 60 years from now, you'll wake up on that last Sunday in October to a brave new world. As the years march on, a great society will be built.

And you'll sleep right through it.

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)