I'm a cypher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce. Also, my name is Kev and I own this here website.
“Spring forward, fall back.” This little phrase is used as a reminder for when to change our clocks for Daylight Savings. Time is cursed at in the spring (when we lose an hour of sleep) and praised in the fall (when we gain an hour).
This past Saturday was one of those joyous occasions where we were to turn our clocks back and gain an hour of wonderful sleep. Only I didn’t. Because I forgot. Again.
As I pulled into church Sunday morning to a near-empty parking lot, I picked up my cell phone and called my mom.
“Where are you,” I asked.
“What do you mean? It’s only ten o’clock,” she replied.
“You forgot to turn back your clock didn’t you?”
She knows me too well.
Daylight Savings Time is an enigma I have yet to completely solve during my twenty-something years on this planet. And even on the occasions where I do remember to set my clock there is usually a fallout.
I’m reminded of the time in college where my body had not yet adjusted to the time change. It was November, a week after Daylight Savings Time, and I stayed up until well after midnight watching television. I didn’t have classes the next day, a Thursday, so I wasn’t worried about being sleep deprived.
I awoke groggy and looked up at my clock. It was only 4:00 in the morning. No wonder I still felt so tired. I put my head down and went back to sleep. I awoke a few hours later and saw that it was only 9:20 in the morning. I still felt tired and groggy, and since I didn’t have to be anywhere I went back to sleep.
A couple hours later I woke up and saw it was now 11:00. “Time to get out of bed,” I thought to myself.
I went to the restroom, put in my contact lenses, and then went to the kitchen to make my lunch. As I sat down to a bowl of Ramen noodles, I signed into my America Online account to check my e-mail. As I looked down at the bottom corner of my computer screen, I saw that the time said 11:24 pm.
“That can’t be right,” I thought to myself.
Even though it would have been much easier to simply look out my window to see if it was day or night (or even to turn on the television and see if Letterman or Leno were on), I called my mom.
“Hello,” my mom says sounding as if she had just been awakened by a ringing telephone.
“What time is it,” I ask.
“Huh,” my mom replies.
I then explained to my mom the series of events. Groggy as she was, my mom was able to pinpoint precisely what had happened:
I slept the entire Thursday.
Each time I had awakened and looked at my clock, it was not in the morning as I had assumed. It was in the afternoon and evening. The first time I woke up, it was 4:00 pm.
I thanked my mom, said goodbye and let her get back to sleep.
It was now a little after 11:30 at night on Thursday. My Friday morning college class was still 10 hours away. I had a lot of time to eat my Ramen noodles, watch infomercials on television, and think about how Daylight Savings Time had bested me.
“Never again,” I vowed that day. “Never again will I let Daylight Savings Time get the best of me.”
Fast forward to Sunday morning as I sat in my near-empty church parking lot. That is when I made a new vow, a vow to find the ancestors of William Willett (the originator of Daylight Savings Time) and make them pay.
Cower in fear, descendants of William Willett.
It’s payback time.
;-) 11.5.07 at 3:51 pm:
It’s very funny that what made you wonder about the time was your computer clock, not the oppressive darkness at what you believed to be 11:24 am. Is that a true story?
Also, though I am not a coffee drinker I noticed some French Vanilla creamer in the fridge at work and decided to try it with some coffee. It was actually quite delicious.
;-) 11.5.07 at 4:45 pm:
@Erin: Yep, a true story. A sad and 100% true story.
Good point. An added detail I omitted was I had only one window in this apartment. It was a two-story garage apartment I rented from an elderly lady. I was on the first level and a deaf couple – no joke – lived above me on the second story.
The stairs to get to their door was right outside my window. I could look out my window and see sunlight (or darkness), but I had to peak through the corners in order to do so. Inside my sad little garage apartment, my window provided the same amount of light at 1pm as it did at 1am, which is to say it provided no light for me whatsoever. Needless to say, this added to my “is it day or night” confusion.
Re: French Vanilla creamer – Of course it was delicious! Now you see why I made such a big deal out of my work’s break room being out of it. See, I’m not so crazy after all…
;-) 11.5.07 at 7:03 pm:
You remind me of a friend of mine. Not only can she sleep the entire day away, she lives in an apartment that has no windows. At all. That lack of windows definitely serves as an enabler!
And speaking of the French Vanilla creamer, I’ve decided to abort my incognito assault mission: “Steal Back the French Vanilla Creamer From Kev’s Break Room”… I recently discovered that someone bought a new bottle for our break room. You are lucky. VERY lucky.
;-) 11.5.07 at 7:11 pm:
@Allison: Thankfully, I’m not like that anymore. Yes, sleeping in on a Saturday morning is the greatest thing on earth, but I keep it in moderation.
So you were planning on stealing back the French Vanilla Creamer? That would have been war, my friend. All out war.
BTW: I’m reading your old blog posts. Right…now.
;-) 11.5.07 at 10:19 pm:
The horror that is daylight hibernation syndrome now has a face.
(It’s yours.)
Better luck next year.
;-) 11.5.07 at 11:52 pm:
(do you mean the descendants of William Willett?)
;-) 11.6.07 at 12:07 am:
That “mistake” adds a whole new dimension to the story, Steve. Can Kev go back in time to exact his revenge, thereby eradicating DST before it begins?
;-) 11.6.07 at 9:55 am:
@Brent: Is there any money in being the face of daylight hibernation syndrome?
@Steve & Leah: (Shoosh! Don’t ruin the surprise twist in part two of the story!)
;-) 11.6.07 at 10:08 am:
Don’t feel bad. Same thing happened to me. I didn’t end up in a church parking lot or anything, but it took me until the evening to figure out why my timeframe was off all day. I’d look at my watch and see one thing, and then at the cable and see a different time. And I never even put it together. Let me know if you ever find the Willets. Could make an interesting documentary…”A Willet in Time.” (Sequel to “A Wrinkle in Time.”)
http://www.ithappenedinplainfield.com
;-) 11.6.07 at 11:34 am:
I used to work a 4am custodial shift during college. One time, for some reason, I had a difficult time sleeping through the night. I awoke every half hour – just tossing and turning. When my clock said 30 after, I got up and went to work. I noticed lots of traffic – much more than normal. It wasn’t until I actually got to work and clocked in that I realized it was only 12:30 and not 3:30. Talk about getting to work early!
;-) 11.6.07 at 9:33 pm:
I can honestly say that DST has never gotten the best of me. I was always the OCD one going around resetting all of the clocks in the house (just like I did this year).
;-) 11.7.07 at 8:42 am:
Here’s a special kind of lazy for you…
DST gets me every year because I’m too lazy to learn how to change the digital clock in my car. It’s rather complicated, so rather than pull out the little manual from my glove compartment box…and why do they call it the glove compartment box? Do people really store their gloves there? There’s no room with the manual!
Anyhow, I’m too lazy to grab the manual, so I spend half the year reminding myself that the time in my car is an hour ahead, and get feverishly excited as Spring DST change approaches because it automatically changes itself! I was going to post about how excited I was last spring and again how disappointed I was this Fall, but there I go again with the special kind of lazy. My children are proud!
;-) 11.7.07 at 1:40 pm:
That’s a funny story. I had a similar experience. I used to work 2 jobs from 12 midnight and didn’t get home around 6PM. Eventually that caught up to me. I came home on Friday afternoon. When I woke up, I was groggy, starving, and had to piss real bad. I was still dark and the clock showed 11 PM.
That was strange…I only slept 5 hours??? I walked into the kitchen and bumped into my dad. He said, “You finally up?”.
That was a strange question, I thought. Then I later realized that I slept not 5 hours, but 29 hours straight!
;-) 3.10.08 at 11:10 am:
[...] well, well, Daylight Savings Time. You thought you were pretty hot stuff when you bested me last Fall. Didn’t you? What happened yesterday, big guy? What’s that? I got the better of you [...]
;-) 3.9.09 at 10:15 am:
[...] those who had no clue, check out 2007’s You’ve Bested Me Again, Daylight Savings Time and 2008’s Take THAT Daylight Savings [...]