Mr. Franklin, you've done some crazy stuff according to Wikipedia. Like those "fresh air baths" you insisted were so good for you when I think all you really wanted to do was stand in front of your bedroom window naked.
And we all know about tying keys to kite strings and trying to catch electricity. Who chases lightning in the hopes of getting struck, anyway?
But what you started with the setting of our clocks one hour FORWARD? You just couldn't get your naked self to the window fast enough so now, at 2 a.m., you've got us paying the price. That's just ... wrong. Selfish. We love our sleep. And on a weekend night especially. Your plan promises a Sunday morning of feeling more like being unconscious than getting my full hours of sleep.
You've got us knowingly setting our clocks ahead for something you've anointed as Daylight Saving Time. How can I get any sleep at all knowing I'm getting robbed of something I need more of every year, my replenishing beauty sleep?
As you get older, sleep is more than something you just give in to. It becomes a cryogenic chamber, suspending body functions so that free radicals within our system can be tamed, quieted. During sleep, I can feel my body restoring and repairing and rebuilding. Sleep has become my Oil of Olay.
And you, Benjamin, have taken from me what I need more of, nature's Juvederm. Time spent with no activity is what my body needs to produce collagen -- the dermal filler and structural protein that plumps and smooths my creases and cracks. This is a serious matter. Beautiful, deep, restorative sleep -- and with no thanks to you and Daylight Saving Time, I'll be getting one less hour of it now.
For more salt in the wounds, I just found out tonight that a state can CHOOSE to participate or not in DST. What? Yes, Arizona and Hawaii have just said no thanks. I feel like the day I found out I could have said no to the medical residents at our teaching hospital in that matter of an extra cervical check (read, able to check "inspect ripe cervix of woman about to give birth" off their list of Things To Do To Graduate) when I was ready to deliver my babies.
I had no idea I could just say no.
We can say no to a lot of things, I keep finding out.
Mr. Franklin, your DST plan is antiquated. We have electricity now, we don't have to worry about a shortage on candle wax, Ben -- and people don't quit plowing the fields because it's gotten dark out. Dark sky? Flip the high beams on your John Deere tractor and keep on working.
I'm with Arizona on this one, no more messing with nature. Time is made the way it's made and our bodies have adjusted to it. All these tricks to fool ourselves and find extra light in our day, it doesn't change the amount of hours we have: 24.
On the outside, I'll go along with the rest of my state because I have to, but the inside me is saying no to Daylight Saving Time.
I say no, especially to the biggest headache of them all -- even bigger than losing an hour of age defying beauty sleep. It's the sound like fingernails on a chalk board to me: hearing Daylight SavingS Time. Said with an "s" after saving. Listening to that -- instead of Daylight Saving no S Time, over a hundred times this week, is going to be hard to take.
Especially on one less hour of sleep the night before.