As we head into the last week of Daylight Savings Time, it’s time that I speak out about a bill that was passed this summer which pissed me off immensely, but not for the political reasons you think. Beginning in 2007, Daylight Savings Time will be extended by 4 weeks. What I have always hated about DST is that it is a lost hour. A lot of people like the extra daylight, but to me the adjustment in schedules twice a year are an inconvenience I’d rather not face. There’s not much that the state of Indiana gets right (see their horrid choice of new license plates every few years), but they are spot on when it comes to not observing DST (except for the northwest section, which keeps the same time as Chicago). Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa also do not observe this practice.

There are many reasons I am not a fan. While the initial implementation of this was the right thing to do – conserve energy during the world wars – I still contend it’s a “lost” hour, especially in regards to sleep. I hated it as a kid, when I had to get up earlier for school and I really hated it in college because of the job that I had. My weekend job was to empty garbage in one of the dorms (3 hours of work and got paid 15 each weekend – a pretty good deal) and when we lost that hour in the fall, I’d have to technically get up between 4 and 5 AM instead of 5 to 6 AM.

Going off topic, when I did that job I always knew how much I had drunk by the amount of times I hit the water fountains. If I drank from both fountains per floor, I knew that I was 3 sheets to the wind. If I only hit it a few times in that hour, I was ready for a Bloody Mary after a few hours of sleep.

Back to my rant, I don’t think the extra hour of daylight is that beneficial to most people anymore. Most Americans are lazy, fat fucks who rarely venture outside except to go to work or somewhere else that’s indoors, so the extra daylight argument falls flat for me. Besides, if it’s earlier at one part of the day, it’s also darker earlier on the flip side. I will contend until the day that I die that going forward an hour is a lost hour, not one gained. We don’t gain it back until the autumn, where that Sunday that we can sleep in an extra hour is a nice little present, at least to me.

Being a parent brings a whole new wrinkle to the time changes. Anyone who’s a parent understands that kids run on a schedule that’s pretty consistent, an hour’s difference messes things and takes a while for the child to adjust. The difference between kids getting up at 6:15 instead of 7:15 is a huge deal and the same logic applies to bedtime.

The bottom line is that with this new law extending DST by a month, kids will be waiting for the bus in the dark in certain parts of the country where they are on the eastern edge of a time zone. Energy isn’t saved because the hour “saved” in the evening from using your lights is spent having your lights on for that hour in the morning. For those of us who hate DST, you will have an extra month of our attitude being rotten from losing that hour. October 30 can’t come soon enough.