Spring backward, stumble to the side

By Marc Munroe Dion

Syndicated columnist

People can get stuck on an idea. After they do, they can only see the world in relation to that idea.

If Jesus comes back riding a Japanese motorcycle, I know at least one guy who won't pay Jesus his proper respect until Jesus gets a Harley.

"That's a chick bike," my friend will explain to Our Savior. "It's the kind of thing The Virgin Mary should ride."

People get stuck on racism, pro, anti or imaginary. They get stuck on sports and The Federal Reserve and guns. They get stuck on gay people.

At this time of year, and at the other time of the year when we change the clocks, there are people who are stuck on daylight saving time and whatever the other kind of time is called.

These people want us to have the same kind of time all year so it always gets dark at the same time or because they think their lunch hour will be longer.

A lot of people stuck on the time change mention it to their legislators or write letters to newspapers or post things about it on the internet, insisting that dark forces are at work, making it darker earlier. In the years when I worked in talk radio, a guy called me and said the time change "scared" small children. What scared me was that guy was a retired teacher.

I'm lucky. I don't understand time at all. I just know that it's always getting darker and, at the end your life, goes black as night. Isn't that enough?

What I do is, I wait until my wife, Deborah, tells me it's time to change the clocks, and then I change the clocks, and it gets dark earlier, and that's something I like. The other time we change the clocks, it gets dark later, and I don't like that, but there's nothing I can do about it, so it doesn't bother me that much.

I'm not even sure what the two kinds of time are called. There's one called "daylight saving time," and the other one may be called "daylight spending time," but I'm not sure.

Thank God for whoever made up that "spring forward, fall back," thing because it is my surest guide to time, other than pregnant women and gravestones, which are the only clocks we really need.

It's not as popular as it once was, but people used to say "clock watcher" about someone who kept his/her eye on the clock at work so they could be up and heading out the door as soon as the shift was over.

Of course, watching the clock at work makes the time go slower, not faster, which feeds into the old saying, "A watched pot never boils," a warning similar to the one that goes, "If you want the bus to come, light a cigarette."

We move time all the time, and we know it, which is why we say children grow up too fast and it takes so long for the pizza delivery guy to show up. If it's good, it goes by fast. If it's bad, it goes by slow, and a day at work will always last longer than sex or a plate of hot wings.

Time will not change if the legislature says so, though they can sort of convince us that it does, and they can keep some of us interested in the process, if we have the time.

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