I am feeling out of sorts.
I am grumpy, and would happily lay claim to being disgruntled except that my gruntle was surgically removed by rambling trustees many years ago while I was covering Langley School Board.
And as was once pointed out to me by once-upon-a-time Langley Township councillor, erstwhile rock star, and all-round good guy Howie Vickberg, “Once you’ve been disgruntled, there is no way in the English language to get it back.”
Nevertheless, I feel comfortable identifying my current self as an unmitigated grouch, although I feel my grouchiness is mitigated by the time in which we live, and nothing can unmitigate it. Go ahead. Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls, too.
I’m not the only one who is knocked for a loop every time Daylight Saving Time rolls around (not Daylight Savings Time, by the way – no ‘s’ – and every time DST arrives, I get just peevish enough to point that out).
This week we can expect a spike in traffic accidents, workplace mishaps, and general clumsiness-related injuries, not to mention grumps, grouchiness, and wholesale disgruntlement.
While most people assume that the rampant mayhem, discourtesy, and lousy moods are due to sleep deprivation resulting from shifting our clocks forward and stealing from ourselves an hour of beddy-byes, the same pattern of accidents and ill tempers occurs after we get an extra hour of sleep in the fall when we put DST to rest.
The experts claim that it’s the change in our sleep routine, and not the sleep itself that puts our better angels to rest for a week or two at either end of DST.
(Donna claims that my DST-induce grumpiness lasts exactly a year... before starting right over again. Hmmph!)
So if the experts are so smart, why don’t they just kill the time changes altogether. Honestly, do we really need them anymore?
DST is supposed to have helped farmers save electricity while the First World War was draining every possible resource.
And yet, I’ve never met a chicken or a cow that could read a clock. They get up – and demand breakfast – at the same time every morning, regardless of where we set the hour hand.
What if we all refused to return to Pacific Standard Time this fall, and save our daylight all year round? Could there be any gruntles left for us to dis?