Yesterday was movie night. Popcorn time. Old comedy movies. You know what I watched? Police Academy. Still funny, still worth watching, even after so many times. But hey, my memory sucks, so I forget a lot of the jokes anyway. Perfect excuse to laugh like it’s the first time!
I hadn’t watched it in a while, so this time I laughed extra hard. Pretty sure my neighbor heard me, but hey, it was Saturday...I’m allowed to be loud! I finally went to bed around 1 AM, thinking, "Wow, look at me, staying up late like a cool person!" (Which, let’s be honest, doesn’t happen often anymore. Adult life...pfff...)
But then… I woke up. Looked at the clock. 7 AM. Six hours of sleep! I was so proud of myself.
Made my coffee, told Alexa to play my radio station, and a few minutes later, they casually announce: "Today is the day we move the clocks forward!" Wait… WHAT?! That means I actually woke up at 6 AM. On a Sunday. What the hell is wrong with me?!
I thought, "Okay, fine, I’ll go back to sleep." But I already had my coffee. There was no going back. WHY are we still doing this clock-changing nonsense?! I was so happy about my six hours of sleep, and they just stole one from me. Rude... 🙁
So, what now? It’s Sunday, nothing to do, not in the mood to read. So, you know what? I started baking. Yes, at 8 AM on a Sunday. What is wrong with me?! My husband and my dog were still sleeping. I tried making noise so they’d wake up and I wouldn’t feel guilty about waking them.
Dog? Awake. One point for me.
Husband? Nope. Still sleeping like a bear in winter. No points for me.
Fine. Time to bring out the vacuum cleaner. Still didn’t wake up. Seriously?!
So, I did some digging. Turns out, Mr. Franklin came up with the idea first. Yeah, the same guy who played with lightning and keys. He wrote a letter saying people should wake up earlier to use more daylight and save candles. Sounds smart, right? But let’s be real...nobody back then had smartphones or Netflix keeping them up until 2 AM.
Then, in the early 1900s, some guy named George Hudson—an insect expert (yes, really), thought, "Hey, let’s move the clocks so I have more time to catch bugs after work!" And somehow, the government actually listened. One man came up with this idea, and they all said, "Yep, sounds good!" ONE man. What the hell?!
Then came World War I and II. Germany and Austria started using it, saying it saved energy. Less lightbulb time, more fuel for war. Okay, sure. But now? We use electricity, not candles, and studies show it doesn’t even save that much energy anymore. So… why are we still doing this?!
Spring forward? We lose an hour of sleep and walk around like zombies for a week.
Fall back? We get an extra hour, but now it’s dark at 4 PM, and everyone is depressed. No winners here.
And guess what? Not every country does this. Some places just said, "Nah, we’re good," and stopped changing their clocks. Meanwhile, the rest of us suffer.
People keep saying we should end it, but here we are every single year, changing our oven clocks, wondering why our phones did it automatically but our microwave is stuck in the past.
At least before smartphones, this whole thing was a little funny. Parents forgot to change the clocks, and boom! Kids were late for school… or worse, showed up an hour early. (Yeah, I still remember sitting outside the school doors, wondering why I was the only one there. Then some other kids showed up, looking just as confused. Good times. No phone to call my parents, just me, freezing outside, questioning my life choices. At least they bought me candy as an apology. Lucky them...otherwise, I would have boycotted school the next day. 😊)
So, what’s the point? Nobody knows. Will we stop? Probably not. But at least we can all complain about it together while drinking extra coffee and trying to figure out what time it really is.
And yes, I’ll spend the next week recovering from my stolen hour. Thanks a lot, daylight saving time.
And what do you think about that?
