Changing of the Clocks Ritual

Just over a week ago we turned the clocks ahead one hour to Daylight Saving Time, which, like every other year, has turned into a month long event. Why on God’s green earth do I have so many darn clocks??? (Why is it called God’s green earth anyhow, since the planet looks blue from space and the term ‘earthy tones’ generally refers to various shades of brown)? Now where was I? Ah yes! These time changes, other than being very annoying, do not affect our lives much at all. Sure, we enjoy the couple of months when we actually get to see the sun before and after work, but overall DST makes little difference to our daily life.

These time changes do take some time getting used to however, as we try to go to bed at our usual time only to stare blankly at the ceiling cursing the person who thought they could manipulate time and all the other people who agreed. The length of this adjustment period differs from person to person. I recently learned that not everyone suffers from DST fatigue, some people, as small as they may be, seem to be able to just ignore the time change altogether. That is right, baby my son has completely ignored the changing of the clocks ritual and has continued on his regular routine.

I have long since given up the effort of ignoring the time change so I adjusted my schedule immediately and continued to feed my son at his regular time intervals and he continued to eat, although not as much. I did find it odd that my son was not eating as much as normal but it was not until Friday, two frustrating days after my son started rejecting his food outright, that I realized why he was not eating. His body runs solely on its internal clock and not some abstract methodology like time. By not acknowledging the time change, my son has given me an extra hour of sleep each night and, since he does not eat dinner until after seven now, he has allowed me to eat before him every night without having to hear him scream.

This year the change over to daylight saving time has a very real, beneficial impact on my life. Maybe the person who convinced us all to take part in DST was on to something. On second thought, changing the clocks is still very annoying.