I’m pretty sure that until Sunday, November 3, my home was operating on Daylight Saving Time. Which, incidentally, about half of all Americans incorrectly refer to as Daylight Savings Time. It’s probably the same people who refer to a safe deposit box as a safety deposit box.
Daylight Saving Time ended Sunday at 2 AM. The local TV news advised everyone to set our clocks back an hour Saturday night. Alas, I was watching TV Saturday night and forgot all about setting my clocks back an hour. My computer and cell phone automatically adjust their time, but the other clocks in my house have to be manually set. One clock is on the front of an old VCR that sits on a shelf below my TV. The VCR no longer works, but I keep it because its clock still keeps time, and it’s in a convenient location. The VCR clock used to automatically adjust for the start and end of Daylight time. But I bought it prior to 2007, which was when the start and stop dates for Daylight time were altered by Congress. So I turned off the clock’s “auto-adjust” feature so it wouldn’t change its time on the wrong days. Now I manually change the VCR clock twice a year by using the remote control.
I adjust my bedroom clock radio twice a year, too. That involves holding down a button (Time Set) while pressing another button (Hours). It only goes forward in time, so to go back an hour, I have to go forward 23 hours (to get back to the correct AM/PM setting).
The living room wall clock is analog; I have to carefully wind the minute hand backward one complete revolution. There’s a clock on my microwave oven and a clock on my electric stove. There’s even a clock on my cordless phone – a small LCD window that displays date, time, and other info such as caller ID and phonebook. (That phone plugs into a gadget that plugs into my Internet router.)
You get the picture. Setting all these clocks back an hour takes a little effort and it isn’t something that, after you’ve done it, you aren’t really sure if you did it. It’s easy to be unsure whether you took your nightly pill two hours ago. It’s virtually impossible to be unsure whether you set all the clocks in your house back an hour.
And yet.
Sunday came, I remembered that Daylight time had ended and I needed to adjust all my clocks accordingly. I went to my computer and looked at the time. I looked at the VCR clock and saw that it agreed with my computer. I got up and looked at the clocks on the microwave oven and the kitchen stove; they, too, agreed with my computer. I looked at my analog wall clock. All my clocks agreed with my computer. I knew I hadn’t adjusted the clocks, so I concluded that for reasons unknown, my computer didn’t adjust itself to the end of Daylight time. To verify that, I grabbed my cell phone and clicked the power button. The screen lit up with the date and time. It, too, agreed with my computer. WTF is going on?
If all my clocks are still on Daylight time, I reasoned, then my computer and cell phone must be displaying incorrect time. I typed “time” into Google’s search box and instantly Google presented me with the local time: it was the same time that my computer and cell phone – and all my clocks - were showing. It was the same time that my cordless phone was showing.
My Jeep has two clocks on its dashboard and I don’t bother changing them to Daylight time – they stay on Eastern Standard Time year round. Before Sunday, those two clocks were one hour slower than my other clocks. If all my clocks had been somehow set back an hour, then they should now agree with the clocks in the Jeep. So I went to the garage and checked the clocks in my Jeep. They displayed the same time as the clocks in my house. So my clocks were set back an hour between Saturday night and Sunday morning. But how?
Let’s be clear: I did not set all those clocks back an hour on Saturday night. On Saturday night, I watched TV and I went to bed. I live in this house alone, and if I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. And I didn’t set those clocks back an hour on Saturday night. But on Sunday, all my clocks had been set back an hour.
Here are the possibilities:
1. Space aliens adjusted my clocks remotely from their mother-ship.
2. Friendly gremlins live upstairs.
3. I set all the clocks while I was asleep.
We’ve all heard stories of people sleepwalking, and even doing somewhat complex tasks while asleep, such as fixing food in the kitchen or driving a car. The reason these things can happen in our sleep is because it is possible for a part of our brain to awaken while the rest of our brain is asleep. When that happens, we may be able to do certain things like walking, driving, making a meal, but we are not conscious of having done anything because the conscious part of our brain is fast asleep.
Until Sunday, the clock on my VCR had been a minute fast. But Sunday, when I compared the VCR’s clock to my computer’s time, I noticed the VCR clock was two minutes slow. So it definitely had been tampered with. Those two minutes were the time my sleeping self needed to:
Turn on the TV and use its remote to set the input to the VCR.
Turn on the VCR and punch up the menu screen.
Navigate the menu to the Clock settings.
Set month. Set day. Set hours back.
Exit VCR setup menu.
Maybe it is the Ambien I took a little while ago so I can sleep tonight. It is doing something to me. It took several long days to type that last word. I’m in Ambien land and it is very F*CKED. In this world of Ambien land, I see people trying to help me. I see them with my peripheral vision. If I look directly at them, they disappear.
I dream reality now, and reality dreams me. It’s one great mandala, slowly rotating through time and space and reality and dreams and wishful thinking which all blends: the real, the imaginary, the symbolic. It’s over my head. It’s out of my hands.
Thank you, my sleeping half, or you thoughtful gremlins who I know only want to help me, for your efforts to keep all my clocks running on time. It looks like you did a thorough job. But let’s try to leave it at that. Let’s not sell the house to strangers while I think I’m in bed sleeping. Let’s not move to southern California while I think I’m asleep. These are Big Things. For now, let’s practice on Small Things while I learn to control this new power.
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