FEATURE — Dear daylight standard time:
Ahhhhh. I’m so glad you’re finally here. I must admit, I thought you’d never come this year.
Yonks. Donkey’s ears. A month of Sundays. That’s what it’s felt like waiting for you. Waiting for your extra hour of sleep. Waiting for your mornings with just a touch of light peeking over the mountains before school.
Because heaven knows how hard it is to wake sleeping giants in the dark.
I know, I know. You are going to tell me that you come at the same time every year. So, why is it getting harder and harder to wait for you?
The other day, I heard from a sleep expert that when you come back, people have fewer strokes. They also have fewer heart attacks.
And when you go away (yes, I’m talking about the dreaded spring forward that is already lurking in the shadows of your arrival), there are more of both of those things.
When you come back, there are also less traffic accidents. Not to mention, you bring that glorious extra hour of sleep. Did we talk about that already?
Well, it’s worth mentioning again because people in 2021 are notoriously sleep deprived. And sleep is everything. It’s linked to better health. It’s linked to better performance. It’s linked to more happiness.
And the extra hour you bring feels absolutely delicious. More delicious than a freshly dipped caramel apple, the coating still warm and supple.
Yesterday, before you came, the inky darkness settled over the valley like an octopus with one hundred tentacles. Like St. Petersburg in the middle of winter. Or maybe Tromsø, Norway but without the promise of Northern Lights.
But today feels like Edinburgh in the middle of summer – light and hopeful and somehow even a little bit warmer.
Even if none of that is actually true, somehow it seems that way.
Did you know that an entomologist from New Zealand named George Hudson was the first to propose your adversary (daylight savings time) back in 1895 so he could get two hours of extra light to hunt bugs? It wasn’t even Benjamin Franklin, like a lot of people think.
But it wasn’t until the Germans thought it would help them with the business of war back in 1916 that you stopped becoming the year-round norm and had to share half the year with that other daylight time system.
That may be why it’s getting harder to wait for your return. Anything born of war takes its toll.
Just look at our health.
After the last eighteen months — the fighting and warring and conflicts and viruses – maybe we’ve just had enough. Or at least I think I have.
So, welcome home, daylight standard time. You are lovely and joyful and delicious. And I wish you could stay forever.
Kat Dayton is a columnist for St. George News. Any opinions given are her own and not representative of St. George News staff or management.
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