Daylight Savings Time

What does Daylight Savings Time mean to me?

Well, if you didn't get The Word, it means if that you got to work at 8am, it was really 9am and you probably are late to work.

It means that the after-work time you had counted on to go to the range isn't there. By the time you got off work, the daylight you had hoped for to sight in your heater probably won't be available for another six weeks.

It means that, during the height of summer, it's no use going to bed at 9pm. It's still light out, so if you have to get up early you probably won't have got a good night's sleep because your choices are (a) keep the window open, and smell your sun-and-beer bummered neighbors burning cheap hamburger for another hour or two, or (b) close the windows and suffocate. If you don't have air conditioning, even in Oregon, there's no way to enjoy a cool night's breeze.

If you DO go to work early, and if you expected to putter in the garden for a while before you hit the road ... forget it until June when it's finally light at oh-dark-thirty.

I have no idea whose convenience Congress had in mind when they imposed Daylight Saving Time on the American public, but I expect it's those late-to-bed, late-to-rise politicians who don't work the same hours as most of their constituents.

Lucky for me I'm a night-owl. I don't get to bed before midnight, no matter what the political expediencies are and no matter where the sun is. But I still wonder what it means to an HONEST working man, if I knew any.

No, it's not easy being me. But sometimes, it's better than being 'normal'.