March 15th, 2021

It's 8:55, which used to be 7:55 but, I have to ask,  which one is the real time?  That's what I want to know.  I assume that everyone did the whole clock thing before bedtime on Saturday night which would mean that today is the second day of walking up at a fake time. Or possibly the previous time was the fake time and this is the real time.  It's only an hour but it's an hour I've come to loathe.

(I am truly curious to know which time is the real time. The spring forward one? Or the fall back one?  I honestly do not know.  It's probably not all that important in the grander scheme of things but I'm curious.  And if we stay here at this time forever, I suppose it no longer matters.  It's like if enough people get together and agree on something, it becomes fact even if it really isn't.  When my sister and I were kids and my dad was returning from another of his long business trips our mother would gather us all together and say, "Ok now we are all going to lie the same lie" and we nodded and agreed and fiction became fact, just like that.  It was always silly inconsequential things like why there was a mysterious dent in the garage door or why we suddenly had 2 dogs instead of 1.)

In years past during the leap ahead or fall back exercise, I've written about how much I despise this ridiculous and pointless exercise so I will not repeat myself and belabor it.  BUT suffice it to say that I hate it and also that I am not the only person who feels this way.

Several years ago now, shortly after we moved to Florida in fact, I read in our newspaper that Florida passed a bill cancelling the entire mess.  "Hurrah!" I naively thought to myself.  Laugh about "Florida man" all you want.  Clearly we are smart enough to know stupid when we see it. And this twice yearly changing of all clocks, including our internal timepieces, is nonsensical. My foolish assumption was that it would soon be distant memory.  HOWEVER,  it turned out that Florida could not enact this bill without permission from the Department of Transportation which is a Federal thing.

Dang.  So it got kicked upstairs where it has been languishing for about four years. But I was very excited to read, over the weekend, that this year both Florida senators are back in Washington nudging it forward.  And in fact they are nudging so loud that other senators are catching on and saying, "Darn good idea guys" and they are strongly backing this play.  So it is possible.......just possible mind you......that the end may be in sight.  This Sunshine Law - which would end the time merry-go-round, could become a Federal Law and nobody will ever have to change their clocks again.  This past weekend might have been the very last time.

Holy Cats!  Wouldn't that be awesome?  I  know that most people do not have analogue clocks anymore so that don't' really have to manually  get in there and physically, literally turn back (or ahead) the clock hands.  Although there is a degree of satisfaction in that very simple exercise.  But most stoves and microwaves - even though they display digital time - there is much pushing of buttons involved to go back one hour.

Some older cars have an even more annoying way of changing the time which involved things like an unfolded paperclip or a pen tip pushing at the worlds tiniest button.  My guess is that in newer cars, which are so much more computerized, probably the time changes automatically like on my phone.  I'm just guessing. I do not know that for fact.   My knowledge stops at my own car which is an older one and it's SUCH a pain in the arse to change the time that I just add or subtract mentally as needs be and never bother to change the display. Yeah, I'm lazy.

Or maybe I'm just tired from having lost an hour of precious sleep!

Here's hoping that this year will be the year that this whole time changing nonsense is finally really and truly done forever and ever, amen.   Keep a good thought!