Thumper Thinks Out Loud

The Dark

I hate, I mean really hate, having to turn the clocks back an hour every fall. Now, I like getting that extra hour of sleep, but overall, it sucks.

The only thing turning back the clock really means to me is that it gets dark earlier every night. And as the year wears on, darkness descends earlier each day, until it reaches a point where if I’m out by myself, I have to head home around 4:30 p.m.

I’m night blind.
Going home at 4:30 makes me feel about 12 years old. Or it used to, until my then-12 years old nephew pointed out that he didn’t have to be home that early.

Great. Wonderful. Now I feel like I’m 8 years old.
If an 8 year old has a later curfew, I don’t want to know about it.

Turning back the clocks also screws up the animals. They get breakfast a little after 9 a.m. The last few days, however, they’ve been whining and pestering me at 8 a.m. Hanks whines from the bottom of the stairs, a steady, annoying, shrill sound that eventually gives way to a howl, and Max jumps up on the bed and pounces on me. He starts by crawling over my body, sticking his face in mine and sniffing – looking to see if my eyes are open, I think – and if I don’t get up, he head butts my nose.

My nose is still tender from surgery. Four months ago. Cripes.

No one has ever been able to give me a satisfactory answer to why we turn the clocks back every fall (and dammit, I can never remember which is daylight savings and which is standard time; whichever, I wanna be in summer-time clock settings year round). I’ve heard the rhetoric about farmers (oh come on, you people get up when it’s dark anyway), and energy savings (Tsk. Really.) But the thing that stands out the most to me is that going back an hour every fall is discrimination against the night blind.

There. I’ve said it.
It’s outright discrimination.
I feel so abused.