The Absent Uncle: Spring forward

This last weekend, we Americans held our traditional “spring forward” exercise in the middle of Saturday to Sunday night.

With that catchy “spring forward/fall back” title, we remind ourselves how to adjust those few clocks that are not “smart clocks” and handle the shift by themselves from some magic programming or a cosmic ray sent from somewhere. 

I get a kick out of the media people reminding us that you will lose an hour of sleep, as if all listeners are so regimented that bedtime and rising time are not somewhat adjustable. (My apologies to those folks who work weekends that have limited hours between shifts and may well be affected by the time change. I do think you are in the minority.) 

Not wanting to take on the controversy regarding whether we should make this annual shift of time as a nation – with the exception of Arizona and Hawaii) – as that is a debate with seemingly no conclusion or final decision. 

Timetables for transportation schedules all need to be adjusted to accommodate the loss or gain of an hour in real time; those workers on the job (minorities need to recognized!) who actually have to work an extra hour or get shorted by miserly employers, and those folks who have the internal clocks that go out of kilter for a day or so are definitely affected. 

For me – I adjust my time on Sunday after I wake up. If I’ve a place to be at a specific time, then I need to cut short by an hour whatever routine I normally follow. But for the most part, I absorb that hour change when convenient. Get up around the same time, follow the morning routine, and quite frankly, the world seems to stay pretty consistent from yesterday into today, and somewhat predictably into tomorrow. 

As I remember, the only time this time change thing was ever an issue was when I was living in California, after getting out of the Navy, and working part-time at a 7-11 while going to college.   

California – at least, in the late 1970’s – restricted the sale of liquors between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. With the change of time scheduled for 2 a.m. it always seemed to confuse the customers when they could or couldn’t buy their beverage. Our franchise owner always spelled it out very clearly; we knew exactly what we could and could not do on the 11-7 shift in his 7-11’s. 

By the way – he was not a miserly employer. If you worked an extra hour in real time – he paid you an extra hour. In the spring forward change he paid that hour in spite of actually working a full eight hours.