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“Spring ahead; fall back.” That’s the mnemonic we all use to remember how much pain is coming when the time changes. It’s fall, the less painful one, and since the time on everyone’s smartphone changes itself now, your alarm will feel like it’s going off an hour late. Pro: You might get more sleep. Con: Your cat won’t care what the clock says, and will just wake you up to get fed at 7:00 a.m. instead of 8:00 a.m.
But if you’ve never given the time change more than a moment’s thought, and you’re up late tonight when the shift from daylight saving to standard time occurs, here’s what will literally happen.
Time is tweaked right now, with the day unnaturally stretched to give us more the daylight. Every place that observes daylight saving time agrees that during the sunny months, astronomical high noon—the point at which the sun is straight up—is 1:00 p.m. We fix this in the fall by repeating an hour, putting noon back in its correct place, and making sundials accurate again.
If you watch the time change in the wee hours of the morning on your smartphone or smartwatch, you can literally see time. If you’re using an android phone, set your lock screen clock to analog in Settings>Style. If you’re on an iPhone, just stare at the icon of the Clock app, which is a fully functional analog clock. In my experience, the time change will occur at 2:00:01 a.m. on Apple devices. I don’t know why.
When the big moment comes, the little hand will jump back to the left, and your perception of quantifiable time as a fixed law of the universe will be shattered. Truth will be exposed as an artificial construct, and everything you believe is meaningful will be replaced with a void.
For one hour, you will now exist in a sort of purgatory of extraneous time. You shouldn’t be awake. If you’ve ever read Stephen King’s The Langoliers, you know what to expect in this zone. No birds in the sky. Food tastes stale. The air in your lungs feels empty. Machines don’t work. Giant disembodied mouths may eat you. The usual. (Obviously I’m kidding. But read The Langoliers.)
And you’re probably going to hate what happens tonight: the clock time you associated with the sunset on November 1 will now suddenly shift to one hour earlier on November 2, meaning the day will feel “an hour shorter.” The sun will hurtle below the horizon in the late afternoon, and you’ll suddenly feel vampiric and nocturnal, eating dinner in the dead of night. Young kids unaccustomed to staying up late will suddenly feel like they’re learning the secrets of night time, because they are.
Oh, and don’t forget to manually change the little clock by the speedometer in your car. That one’s really important.
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Mike Pearl
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