Sprung forward

Do you ever wake up feeling out of sync? Out of sync with the world, I mean? Happens to me more often than I care to admit: in fact, the feeling can carry beyond waking up.

This time, it looks like I missed the message of daylight saving time. I found myself wondering why, on a Monday morning I was standing at the front door in pyjamas responding to a friend who had called on me for a walk on the Millennium Trail. But it was still dark out, I told him. And whatever the adverb is for having to spring forward, as in the past tense, it seems like the neighbours have already sprung, or sprang … or whatever. So I grumbled about the idea of saving daylight and having to reset my watch and I want to know exactly who came up with the concept, who gains and how.

Maybe I’m off base here but between you and me, I think we’re being had. Not only had but the myth-makers have tagged farmers with the blame. Easy target, right? Urbanites blaming the agrarian society because, well, the former have the halls of power at their doorsteps while the latter are out there somewhere and just too busy to rebut. That is the perception. Smooth move, but discredited all ‘round. Just ask a dairy farmer or land surveyor or a school student whether they prefer dark or light at 6 a.m. this time of year.

We’d want to have talked to the Mayan people about the sun’s movement before we mucked around with time. They were close to the equator. Or ask folks in Nunavut or Iceland about daylight and the tilt of the earth’s axis and solar time, and watch their eyes glaze over.

So I decipher the story this way: we spring time ahead to end up with more daylight at the end of the day, at least according to our watches and clocks. For many of the population living in a Daylight Saving Time (DST) or summer time zone as it is known, it means returning from work in the daylight and possibly having extra time to shop. And to go shopping you’ll likely be driving your vehicle. That, in turn, probably means a fill-up at the gas bar. See where I’m headed here?

I imagine it is no coincidence that the profits for oil companies raised since daylight savings was invoked way back when. Notice the price increase at the pump since Monday? Or that retail sales rose similarly. Some folks argue that DST betters the productivity of the nation.

But the idea, you see, originated as a satire. Ben Franklin, the guy who came up with, among other things, “early to bed, early to rise,” wrote a spoof while he was American envoy to France in 1784 about taxing closed shutters and also saving candles by changing the clock. He felt Parisians slept in too late: they love the night and so it didn’t change a thing.

It didn’t help that another eccentric later came along to further Franklin’s case. A shift worker in New Zealand named George Hudson figured it would be brilliant if time was altered so that he could pursue his love of entomology after work. So we’re gonna rearrange time on the planet to accommodate one person down under and his afterhours hobby of bug collecting, eh?

DST was introduced in 1918 to conserve energy during WWI. Farmers lobbied to have it repealed after the war. DST was re-enacted during WWII, repealed again, then re-introduced in the US in 1966. The states of Arizona and Hawaii opted out of the program. Meanwhile, George W. Bush, while president in 2007, expanded summer time by one month. A recent survey in the state of Indiana proved that electricity demand actually rises during DST.

But having sleep studies on my radar these days, I discovered this: it is not just me who feels groggy when we spring the clock forward. The truth is, I ignore it for as long as I can get away with it. Something called the Better Sleep Council— mind you, their members sell beds —says that 60 per cent of the population feels the effects of lost sleep on the Monday following the resetting of time. Workplace injuries also rise on that day and for the following week, traffic accidents are up by six per cent nationally.

Government agencies are now taking sleep deprivation and its health effects seriously since the disorder has been attributed to colossal tragedies in recent times, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the space shuttle Challenger explosion.

So my proposal is this: the County takes the lead in opting out of DST. Just think of the range of clichéd tourist literature about stepping back in time. And we make money for the Essroc Arena by turning it into a sleep clinic.

In the meantime, I have signed up for the concept of taking restorative sleep seriously. Even if I miss my 6 a.m. morning walks with friends. And I am having new bumper stickers printed that read: “Farmers Not Only Feed Cities, but they are not the baddies when it comes to DST.” It might need the whole trunk lid or tail gate to attach a sticker but the bonus is, you won’t feel left behind when the world springs forward. We’ll be sprung free. As free as the wind blows, or so the song goes.