I hate Daylight Saving Time. To be more specific, my whole family hates Daylight Saving Time: me, him, kids, all the way down to the dog. It is springtime, which means of course we were forced to "spring forward" an hour last weekend. But I also won’t say I’m a fan of "falling back" the hour later in the year.
Someone needs to explain to architects and new-home builders that Daylight Saving Time exists, because they seem to design houses as if it does not: gigantic walls of windows let in the blazing "extra" daylight to scald us in the morning and slowly bake us in the evening the rest of the year. In our old house, the afternoon sun during some months would literally melt candles and candies left on the kitchen counter. One sad October, we made the fatal error of leaving our freshly-carved jack o’ lanterns in the path of the fiery sunbeams: in 2 days flat they had decomposed into mold-filled fright fests. The final insult came when we removed our custom-made area rugs to sell the house, only to find the jagged "amoeba" pattern burned onto the hardwood floor (DST atomic fallout, perhaps).
For weeks after we are told to change our clocks for DST, the kids drag around the house every evening, resisting bedtime "because it’s still light out." In the morning, we have to bang a gong to get them out of bed and dressed for school. Even the dog participates in this lie-in protest, refusing to get off her cushion for the usual morning romp in the yard. I, of course, have to put on a sunny face for all these activities (even though I am even more miserable than they are, since I was never a ‘morning’ person to begin with).
To complicate matters of a practical nature, there is the issue of the CLOCKS. We have a lot of clocks in the house---at least one in every room---as well as clocks on various appliances and electronic items. (Watches of course also need to be set, but I say that falls upon the wearer alone.) We slowly make the rounds, upstairs downstairs here and there and everywhere…until only HE is left to do: the giant wall-clock known as BRAVUR.
BRAVUR is so named not by us, but by IKEA, his store of origin. (Everything in IKEA has an odd Swedish name.) He is 2 feet in size, a cool white circle with a black edge. Think of the plain old clocks that once graced the hallowed halls of public-school gymnasiums across the USA--- those fine timepieces could have been the tender cousins of BRAVUR.
BRAVUR is always a pain when it comes to DST, because he is hung 20 feet in the air on a prominent wall. This is great from a design standpoint, because typically he can be seen from upstairs and downstairs, several rooms and landings having a clear view of his obvious face. When the dreaded DST comes to town, BRAVUR’s placement makes him by definition the last clock in the house to be re-set; for days---weeks, if we are truly lazy---we must perform a mental one-hour adjustment for poor BRAVUR.
Eventually the giant extendable ladder is brought in from the garage and someone (hopefully not me this year) teeters up the aluminum steps to the dizzying world of BRAVUR. Balancing carefully on the ladder, the unlucky person then must 1) remove BRAVUR from the wall, 2) adjust the hands, and 3) hang and center him back on his nail. Not a task for those with a fear of either heights (batophobia) or clocks (chronomentrophobia).
We have, of course, considered leaving BRAVUR as is---he could be the Arizona of the clock-world! Once Spring melts into summer and then fall, he’ll be right in line with the official laws of the land again (thanks for nothing, President Lyndon Johnson). Now that our daughter is old enough to tell time, though, it might be considered a sort of DST-abuse to leave the main clock in the house maladjusted…or would it?