Daylight Savings Time

March 16, 2007, 12:25 pm; posted by
Filed under Articles, Josh J  | No Comments

DanielI’m kicking myself. I feel there’s nothing I can say but “I’m sorry.” As the last man out the door at week’s end here at Bweinh!, I should have used last Friday’s article to issue a Daylight Savings reminder. I know at least one person it would have saved.

The relative dearth of Daylight Savings reminders has come to baffle me in recent years. It seems pretty important, the kind of thing that should be noted everywhere. Posters should be put up around town, commercials should air at least once an hour, major websites should have a headline, that sort of thing. But the only place I ever seem to get reminded is church. I guess the rest of the world figures you’ve got an entire day to catch up if you’re a little slow.

Since my parents are pastors, I never had to worry about Daylight Savings growing up, at least not for myself. Sometimes I worried if we’d be the only ones in church that week, but that’s about it. Since I’ve been an adult, it’s been a little more complicated, particularly during the period of my life when I wasn’t working for a church. During that time, my “strategy” for keeping up with the clock changes basically involved someone mentioning it offhand on either Friday or Saturday, followed by surprise I made no attempt to hide.

PhilBelieve it or not, this method has some holes. Last year, my roommate was away for the weekend, I didn’t make my customary Saturday call to the folks, and I didn’t go out. Days later, my girlfriend at the time said she should have called to remind me, but, um, didn’t. Even so, I still could have been saved by my friendly neighborhood cell towers. I use my cell phone as an alarm clock, and these clocks update automatically. My alarm should have gone off at the new correct time; from there it’s debatable if I would have figured out why, or even noticed that the rest of my clocks didn’t match up.

Instead, my alarm didn’t go off at all, and I was awakened by a call from my pastor. It was 10 AM, time for Sunday School, but I wasn’t present, despite my scheduled participation (more on that in a minute). I was entirely confused, even after she informed me of Daylight Savings. My alarm still should have gone off at the wrong 8:30, after all, but my alarm was still set and my clock now showed the correct time. Then I realized: instead of updating at the standard 2 AM, my clock corrected itself at 8 AM, sprung forward to 9, and passed over my wakeup call.

Phil Back Since church at the time was a 35-minute drive from my house, I had to skip my Sunday School duties that week. Each week I had been dressing up as a different Biblical Superhero and acting out the story. We had character cards the kids could collect — for instance, “Lion Master,” with the story of Daniel on the back, and “Water Walker,” a more aquatic-themed costume with the story of Peter. During the week I took the card to the thrift store and bought supplies to match the costume as closely as I could. Costume making is actually something I’ve enjoyed since childhood, and although my replications weren’t professional, they also weren’t half-bad, if I dare say so myself.

Anyway, my character for that week was “Wind Rider,” based on Philip and the time he preached the Gospel to an Ethiopian, then was whisked away instantly to another city miles away. And there I was, miles from where I needed to be, wondering if just maybe that week’s costume might actually work.


Comments

Leave a comment!