Anger (in moderation) over changing clocks

Lou Marzeles
News Editor     

     OK, now I've really had it. I have a very long fuse; it takes a lot for me to get really upset about some things. My fuse has been burning since the Johnson administration over some issues of national politics which I keep trying to remember to get really upset about and which seem to evaporate at the first sniff of fresh coffee every morning. It's so annoying to be so annoyance free.
     But this time I am really annoyed. My fingers are trembling in moderate irritation as I type these really somewhat upset words.
     I have to change the time on my clocks this weekend. I will have to do this for the first time in eight years. Arizona, for all its wanton waywardness, the state which drove me from its borders because it induces such a profound state of ennui, at least knows enough to never change its time. It stays on Mountain Standard Time all year round. It doesn't care that the rest of the country considers it, and its professional football team, aberrant.
     I have confused clocks to think of. These poor things haven't had to undergo anything more trying than a change of battery for eight years. Except for the one I once hurled at a snarling javalina back in Sedona. It was him or me.
     Now, I must once again accommodate the irrational legacy of Benjamin Franklin, who history and the movie "National Treasure" teach us invented daylight savings time. Franklin's image is very becoming on money, but it hasn't been enhanced by his notion that time is something to meddled with by mere mortals. The hands of time, or at least those of timepieces, should be immutable and fixed, year round. The human condition is so clearly unequipped to handle the more-or-less moderately serious irritation inflicted upon it by this relatively dire situation.