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Lori Borgman: No time like the present or past or future, whatever

Lori Borgman, Tribune News Service on

Published in Lifestyles

Because I love, love, love saving time, I am looking forward to the first weekend in November when the entire nation will save 60 minutes — not the Sunday night news program but an hour on the clock.

Of course, nobody likes to mention the fact that the only reason we are “saving” an hour is because an hour was stolen from us in the spring. The second weekend in March is when the entire nation willingly consents to theft -- to turn the clocks forward, have an hour taken from us, and try to trick our bodies, metabolisms, sleep cycles, plants, animals and small children into believing it is one time when everyone knows it is another.

Fall is when we set the record, or the time on the clock, straight. We gain back the hour that was stolen.

Justice.

The question is, what to do with the hour we gain?

My first instinct is to go to the gym. That is quickly canceled by my second instinct, which is to celebrate and make a coffeecake. Then maybe I can go to the gym. If there is time.

Or maybe we can redeem the extra hour at the end of the day and have dinner twice.

Why do all my time-saving ideas have to do with food? They call it comfort food for a reason. I am comforted that my stolen hour has been returned.

 

Here, have some coffeecake.

I’ve tried reporting the stolen hour in spring as a theft and people laugh. Guess who’s laughing now? And enjoying her extra 60 minutes. If it wasn’t stolen, why are they returning it?

Most of our clocks are digital and will reset themselves while we sleep, but a handful will not.

The clock in our bathroom must be reset manually. If you-know-who resets it late Sunday afternoon and doesn’t tell me, I have a moment of panic wondering why I’m going to bed early. Am I sick? I don’t feel sick.

If I wake up, look at the time on my phone and see it doesn’t match the time on the bathroom clock, I have another moment of self-doubt. Am I in in the twilight zone? Do they observe daylight saving time in the twilight zone?

A small battery-operated clock on my desk needs to be reset manually, which I will forget to do for weeks. One day down the road, I will look at it, panic, scramble and rush off for some appointment an hour early.

There was some rumbling about curtailing daylight saving time last year, but that’s all it was -- noise. All this back and forth, sleeping, not sleeping, switching up schedules for babies and small children, is exactly why we shouldn’t mess with Father Time. There’s a reason the old guy looks grumpy. He knew what we were about to do.


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