Daylight Enslavement

Growing up in Arizona, it's a peculiar way of experiencing Daylight Savings that we have. We don't do it. I have always endorsed this policy, and still do today. It's one of the few things unique to my home state that I'm still proud of, although it's not entirely effective thanks to the encroaching of the outside world (which includes the Navajos, who are an island of unreason in a land of otherwise sane time management.

As we never had dealings with Navajos personally, that was not a problem for us. What always was an issue were the friends and loved ones who lived in places that do abide by it. All my life, I knew that sometimes it was so many hours difference from where family was if we were calling, and sometimes it was an hour more. That's all it was to me, and I don't enjoy at this point in my life having to learn to deal with the clocks, although most of them handle this on their own.

My computers all adjust on their own, I believe. I know that my phone does as well. My wristwatch certainly will not adjust, and I have to relearn its operations every time that an adjustment is called for (this being every few days, owing to its low quality). I think that we may have to deal with the oven, the microwave and the coffee machine, although what the consequences will be if any of those latter items goes off by an hour escapes me.

I suppose it's only the two days a year where this whole thing is an issue. It seems as if it's always on a night when I need the rest that the hour is denied me, and it's always on a night when I have no use for the extra hour that it's restored. I would just as soon save us all the two traumatic nights and have the people who need extra daylight hours make their own arrangements to make the most of what is there either way. There's no sense in dragging the government into it.

I could go back and forth, though. There is so little that binds us as citizens and human beings anymore in this country. Few salute the flag, and we long ago stopped watching the same shows on television. The grumbling and dismay about dealing with Daylight Savings may be one of the last collective things that we have as a country to any degree, so I guess maybe we ought to be grateful. It could even be saving us lives. If that's so, then I take back what I said.