When the clock can't tell time

I've been getting up in the dark my entire adult life. (Some will say I've been in the dark about most subjects as long as they've known me, but that is another essay.) The primary reason for this nocturnal stirring is daylight saving time. I am on sun time, not clock time. I always have been. All summer long, I'll be getting up in the dark at 6 a.m. according to the clock, when it's really 5 a.m.

However, on April 7, we will "spring forward" again. The clocks will be artificially set one hour ahead.

They call it daylight saving time, but it doesn't save a minute. The sun continues to shine for as long as it darn well pleases, just as it always has, and the Earth will continue to rotate around it at its usual steady, even pace. No amount of caterwauling by humans will save a single second.

"We have an extra hour in the afternoon," some say. No, we don't. We just pretend we do. And who needs any more afternoon sun in Florida anyway?

It was Benjamin Franklin who first suggested the idea in 1784. He wrote a "whimsical essay" on the subject. No one took it seriously at that time. It wasn't until World War II that daylight saving time was first initiated. The farmers complained bitterly, saying the cows were "unable to adjust to a new milking time," according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

I'm amazed the farmers even tried it. They can get up whenever they want to. They don't have office hours. They can just knock off at supper time and go to bed when the cows come home or whatever. In Florida we have a lot of cows. We also have a lot of oranges, but neither cows nor oranges have Mickey Mouse wrist watches.

When I lived in the Philippines -- like Florida, another area of excessive sunshine -- the clocks were never changed. The business day simply began at 7 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. People could go to work while it was still a little cooler. If anyone wanted to play golf or go fishing after work, he simply had at it. At least the sun went down at 8 p.m. and gave us a little respite from the heat.

I'm an early morning person because I grew up in an operating room. I was a scrub nurse and on duty at 6:30 a.m. to prepare for the early cases. Sometimes I would have to yell at the surgeons, still at the sink scrubbing their hands, "Let's get this show on the road! Seven-thirty means we see blood at 7:30, not start scrubbing at 7:30!"

They didn't pay a whole lot of attention to me, either.

I know what time it is. It's just the clock that doesn't know what time it is. I like to ride my bike to the swimming pool early in the morning, but it's still dark out. I wear white shirt and pants so people driving to work in the dark can see me. At least, I hope they see me.

Daylight saving time is a hoax foisted on us by people who probably can't tell time anyway and need something to make them feel powerful. One idea is that it saves evening electricity. Not if you have to turn on the lights in the morning to read Pickles, it doesn't.

Others say it is a retail therapy adjunct. People will continue to shop until it gets dark and then it will occur to them that it is time to go home. Who said, "The business of America is business"?

So, how does daylight saving time answer my favorite analytical questions?

-- Is it aesthetic?

No, there is nothing aesthetic about getting up in the dark. It hurts our eyes when we turn on the bathroom light and makes us wince as the glare of white porcelain hits our eyes.

-- Does it amuse us?

It might be amusing to the ice cream man who can continue in his truck with the tinkly music until all the little children have gone in for supper.

-- Is it tax-deductible?

No.

Then there's the other end of the problem. I get tired and go to bed at 9 p.m. And it's still light out!

-- Niela M. Eliason is author of Kitchen Tables and Other Midlife Musings. Write to her c/o Seniority, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. Or send e-mail to Niela@prodigy.net.

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