Spring Forward! Winter Awkward.

It’s the Ringling Brothers Daylight Savings Time! Wake up, crocuses! We lose an hour! How do you lose an hour? Seems like carelessness in the extreme. Actually, it’s all too easy. Just turn that little doohickey (that, in fact, is its technical name) so the minute hand goes around the little circle, which drags the hour hand with it to the next number. There’s your hour. Not really lost at all. Just unnaturally sped up, an hour in a second. We get to do time’s work!

It’s times like these that you realize just how artificial measured time is. Hey, let’s turn the clocks forward! Like an agreed-upon prank. Like Backwards Day, or Talk Like a Pirate Day. Or maybe it’s like being your own tooth fairy: putting a dollar under your pillow the night before for the pleasure of finding it next day.

Do I sound snide? I guess there’s a part of me that’s feeling sorry for Standard Time. It was making such progress. Worked with the sun, one on one, every day, to gain those winter minutes. Pushed that sunset from 4:15 to 5:00 to 5:30 to 6:00. And now, with one deft, impatient, twist of the doohickey, we take over, ordain sunset to be 7:00. Hey, whatever you want, man.

Oh, I’ll enjoy it. Have dinner out on the back porch. Move that bubble of afternoon into what used to be evening. It’s just… Couldn’t we have the decency to wait until winter is done? The local newscasters are going to be all over “Spring forward!” while winter, entitled to its final week, quietly stuffs its parka in a big dufflebag, makes a big sign to hold out while hitchhiking: NORTH; and decides not to quarrel over the rent deposit. No, maybe it’ll just SNOW ON US!

Don't forget to set your clocks, dudes.