The weekend approaches. This one, in particular, I dread.
I have plenty to look forward to Saturday — Manchester United hosts Liverpool and the Xolos play Tigres — but it is Sunday that gives me angst.
Sunday 2 a.m.
That is the day and the hour we as a nation participate in the bi-annual psyche adjustment. When we “spring forward” and turn our clocks ahead by an hour in observance of Daylight Saving Time.
(The next time our timepieces are adjusted is Nov. 4 at 2 a.m., when clocks “fall back” and are turned back one hour for a mere four months.)
The ritual, in spring or fall, finds me startled awake and for a moment I and the greatest minds in physics and philosophy have something in common as we contemplate time, space and what reality means.
I’ll wonder what day it is, what time it is and if it really is 6 a.m. or if it is 5 a.m. because I failed to set my clock ahead before I fell asleep at 9:30 the night before.
(Life was much easier and exciting when I was young and could stay up well past 2 a.m. and enthusiastically adjust every clock in my house that needed adjusting.)
I’ll then remember that I don’t have many clocks and that the smart phone keeps track of time and when I glance at the cracked screen I will curse, as I usually do, when I realize that again I forgotten to have it charge over night.
I will lie in bed a few more minutes debating if I am an hour ahead or an hour behind. Will I be late or will I be awkwardly early?
I will be slightly relieved when I realize I don’t have anywhere to be until noon, whenever that is.
I’ll trudge to the kitchen and stare at the oven clock and wonder if I had set the time ahead by an hour. No, I will conclude, why would I? and I will put the clock ahead an hour.
I’ll get into my old car — the sort that still has roll up windows and a dashboard that is not reliant on a microchip telling me that my fuel tank is half empty — and I will stare at the digital clock on the radio. Is it 7 a.m. or 8 a.m.? I will go back to the kitchen and look at the oven clock and see that it is 7 a.m. and return to the car and fiddle with my stereo, muttering as I try to figure out how to set the correct time. I will not.
Defeated, I will give up and drive to a cafe and purchase a coffee and pastry. The cafe may be relatively empty, owing to the fact that it is Sunday and most people like to sleep in on Sundays.
The clock on the wall will say 6:25. I will chuckle and smugly tell myself that I will help the cashier by pointing out that she needs to change her clock ahead one hour. No, she will tell me, she will show me the time on her smartphone. It is 6:25.
I will spend the rest of the day worried if I am coming or going on time. And I will wonder where it has all gone.
