I grew up in Indiana in the late 1970s and early 1980s, back before the state started doing Daylight Saving Time. We didn’t change are clocks, so what it meant to me as a kid was that I got an extra hour of TV-watching in the evening.
Thus, I was utterly baffled when I moved to Cleveland to go to college and was suddenly faced with the idea of changing the clocks each fall and spring. “Spring forward”? “Fall back”? What was this madness?
The worst instance I can remember back then was my first year out of college, when my schedule at the crummy bookstore where I worked had me on a Saturday closing shift followed by a Sunday open. When the spring time-change rolled around, I as faced with even less sleep.
I eventually got used it, but then I had kids. Because what any new parent needs is one more goddamned thing to mess with the kid’s sleep habits.
We are finally at a point where both kids are old enough that the changing of the clocks and the associated schedule disruptions are not too bad. There is a day or two of bedtimes and wake-ups being off, but then we settle back into our usually rhythms.
The whole thing seems like such a silly waste of energy, though, and I wish we could go back to not doing it.