Midwest Memo
Day fright savings time
by Alan Shultz

Well it finally happened. The State of Indiana went on daylight savings time and Hoosier cows throughout the land, every single one of them, managed to wake up at their same usual time, no matter what the clocks said.

I'd be lying if I told you I understand one wit about daylight savings time.

My wife, on the other hand, has theorized for years that it's our lawmakers golf tee time or a collaboration of secret agendas that yields this annual ritual. And so now, Congress and the President have tinkered with time to give us even more...exactly, what?

The last time I looked, we're still working with 24 hours.

The last time I looked, some of us are morning folks, and some aren't.

And as one of the morning folks, I feel robbed, more like fall, more like "lost an hour."

Right now my kitchen clock on the top of the stove says 7:03 a.m. That's because I fussed with it. At the very same time the clock on the microwave at the other side of the room is at 6:59. That discrepancy will have to do if I don't want to risk more "down time" with the microwave. The last time I changed the digital read on the microwave it went blank in protest for about a week. Then one day it just came back - on its own terms, on its own time.

It's now 7:06 a.m. in the kitchen. The little clock at the bottom of my screen on the computer begs to differ. The computer is supposedly the smartest machine in our house. While the kitchen reads 7:06, the computer reads 5:09 a.m. I'm not sure if the computer thought it was fall and "fell behind" or, that it's been off an hour for a whole long time and I never noticed.

Over in the living room, the digital clock on the VCR is no longer visible. I have once again pasted a yellow post-it note over the clock readout. This is the same wonderful machine I've written about in the past. It is the very same gadget that previously has changed time by itself. It "sprung forward" in the spring and "fell behind" in the fall, without any intervention or in reading of the instruction manual.

It's now 7:15 a.m. in the kitchen. One peek under the post-it note tells me that none of this is saving me any time. While the kitchen clock reads 7:15, the VCR says 12:14. The VCR has now weighed in on a.m. or p.m., so I don't know how confused it really is. I guess clearly the cows are smarter than the VCR. If I had ever learned how to program the VCR to record my favorite shows, it would now be recording a late night infomercial instead.

None of my clocks agree

with the current digital read

out on the clock portion of my cell phone. The cell phone says its 7:19. Supposedly the cell phone is the most accurate of them all. It's definitely smarter than the cows or me or the microwave. The cell phone gets its time from some satellite watching overhead.

I do a lot of back and forth between Illinois and Indiana. Thanks to our lawmakers, these adjoining states are now one hour different in time, all the time. My cell phone timekeeper knows this and changes to the correct time when I cross the state line. In contrast, the clock on my dashboard in the car is a dumbbell by comparison. That clock gets covered by a yellow post-it depending on which side of the Illinois/Indiana boarder I'm traveling.

I guess I should write to my congressman in complaint over this nonsense. But I figure he's playing golf and wouldn't have time to read my letter anyway. Meanwhile, I owe a thank you note to whoever invented those sticky little yellow post-its. They sure come in handy this time of year.