Why do they call it Daylight Saving Time? Time is one of the many things, like youth, beauty and opened bottles of wine, that cannot and should not be saved and, in any case, saving things is positively un-American. Daylight Borrowing Time would be more appropriate. All through the summer we took that extra hour of daylight on credit, adding it to the end of the day to give us those long summer evenings.
At the end of October, when things are bad enough already, what with Halloween and the elections and Thanksgiving and the holidays and winter all coming up, our borrowed time is suddenly and arbitrarily snatched back, and half the population sinks into the depressed state called SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder – which is not a disorder at all but merely a commonsense reaction to the months of gloom and darkness that lie ahead.
This nonsense began during the First World War, supposedly as a device to save electricity. But really it represented the triumph of the Morning People. Morning People are energetic, immature and rash. They get up in what is more or less the middle of the night and rush cheerfully off to work, saying how nice it is to have the extra hour of daylight. Night People are more mature, more thoughtful, and less impulsive. They may be a little depressed and snappish in the mornings, and need an extra hour of daylight at 5:00 as much as they need a meteor strike. But then they brighten up gradually through the day, reaching a state of maniacal energy and cheerfulness at midnight. In other words, Night People are perfectly reasonable and sensible in every way.
It is a law of nature that Morning People must always marry Night People, and vice versa. This explains the residual figure of twelve percent who never marry, because they can't find the wrong partner. Morning People hide their perverse orientation before the wedding ceremony. It is one of those many awful truths that emerges only after the papers have been signed, like a taste for porridge or a partiality for cats. After all, if you tell such nasty secrets before the marriage contract is nailed down, you will certainly stay single all your life. Fifty-six percent of Americans claim to be Morning People. When the clocks go back and our precious hour of afternoon daylight vanishes, it may be democracy, but it's not justice.
Morning People do have a few legitimate complaints about the way the world is organized. But it’s up to them to make their own arrangements. As far as I'm concerned they're welcome to have night clubs that open in daytime, midnight movies at noon, candlelit dinners at breakfast time, and New Year celebrations at midnight in Scotland, which is 7 p.m. our time.
But Night People are the real victims in this morning-oriented society. We suffer puritanical abuse, and false claims of moral superiority from those oh so dynamic morning people. Above all we suffer from alarm clocks, especially those that have a so-called "humane wake-up system" or that play jolly little tunes, like "It's a bright, bright sunshiny day" and "Oh what a beautiful morning" – because it never is.
Copyright: David Bouchier
