3/9/09 Daylight Savings Time

Literal, absolute-thinking Gabriel can't accept Daylight Savings Time. Yesterday when I'd mention the time, he say with great consternation, "NO IT ISN'T!" and then insist it was actually an hour earlier. "So WHAT if the clock says 7:00?" he'd say. "You still know it's really only 6:00." He thought it would be a mere matter of informing the teacher to get the school to reset the time.

But I really had to laugh this morning, when he said that it also wastes energy to have to turn on the lights in the morning. My mother will certainly chuckle at that too, because as a kid, I too was very offended by a daylight savings time change that forced us to get up earlier. That daylight savings change was made early, brought on by the energy crisis of the 1970s. I so hated getting up earlier -- still do -- that I wrote an angry letter to President Nixon, informing him of the error in his energy-saving logic: "...we get up and TURN THE LIGHTS ON!" Clearly he hadn't considered this unintended consequence and needed me to enlighten him!

One very fundamental difference between having babies and schoolkids is that daylight savings time that results in getting up "earlier" is a good thing with babies (Katrina was zonked well past the-new-7am), but it's a bad thing when you have to get kids to school on time. Unless, that is, the school changes its ways based on an angry letter from a know-it-all kid.

3/9/09