Welcome to Day 4 of a 31 day challenge to write 500 words or more.  For more on that click here:  goinswriter.com

Senate Sergeant at Arms Charles P. Higgins turns forward the Ohio Clock for the first Daylight Saving Time. Onlookers clearly share my disappointment. photo credit – wikimedia commons

I am not a huge fan of Daylight Savings Time.  It’s ok if you are.  My reasons are entirely selfish.

For starters everybody gets all excited about one extra golden hour of sleep. 

“I’m sleepin’ in tomorrow!  Daylight savings baby!”

I love sleeping in as much as anyone so it makes sense that you would give an extra hour of rest to the entire population.  This especially makes sense in the U.S. where we have one of the lowest averages for annual number days off in the world.

“Well . . . we can’t give them a whole extra DAY to rest but how does an hour sound?”

I blame the President.

To accurately gauge who actually benefits from the extra hour of sleep you would technically need to subtract massive segments of the population.

People who have young children for example.  Children have no respect for time.  They just get up when they get up and those parents are actually now up an hour before the rest of the country feeling robbed and jaded.

People who forget are another chunk of unfortunate victims.  They are the ones who realize sometime on Sunday that they were supposed to “fall back” and now it will be a full year before they have a shot at the golden restful hour.  You will notice these people throughout the day falling to their knees, shaking their fists at the sky and screaming, “NOOOOO!  Curse you Daylight Savings Time!!”

Finally those who have no pressing obligations early on Sunday morning miss at least some of the sleeping in perks.  It’s great for Christians who attend the early service but I currently attend a church that meets at 4pm.  I sleep in EVERY Sunday morning.  Not complaining about that but still, I want my special hour.  I’m thinking about suing the government for religious oppression.

All in all the number of people who genuinely enjoy the golden hour seems like a painfully poor return on investment.  The investment being of course that it now gets dark at NOON.  This strategically coincides with the day when all of the leaves fall of the trees and the temperature drops.  It’s like the starter gun for the long, cold, depressing winter.

Only they aim the gun at you.

And then kick you as you take off and while you’re laying on the cold ground they say, “Stay down.  Rest for an hour.  You’re welcome.”

Do I sound bitter?  Sorry.

Considering the scope of real problems that exist in the world I suppose my annoyance over Daylight Savings Time doesn’t even register.  In fact, just in the scope of issues that I have personally, it probably doesn’t rank in the top ten.  But that’s what blogs are for right?  For people to complain about problems that aren’t really problems as if someone else should feel sorry for them.

I’m just grumpy . . . .because I have kids . . . and they stole my golden hour.

I did however, use it wisely to write this post.  Sleep is overrated.

And those are my 500 words.