The Village Idiot: Withdrawing daylight-saving time
The sun set tonight at one minute after five. It was a big psychological milestone. The days ARE getting longer. Remind me again, what was the advantage of going off daylight-saving time? So the sun would set at 3:30 in the afternoon instead of 4:30? So we could see the sun from our office window but could drive home in the dark? Exactly why is that a good thing? Is there someone out there who likes to see the sun set at 3:30 in the afternoon? If we’ve been saving daylight all summer long, why can’t we withdraw some of it in the middle of winter when we need it most?
Lack of winter sunlight is wrecking my life. It’s not that I can’t handle it, but the people around me are having a hard time with it. Well, not all the people, but a few of them. People like my wife. Actually, it’s pretty much just my wife. Lack of sunlight sets her off.
If I walk through the house wearing muddy, snowy boots — bam! — she’s on me like Gollum on Frodo. If the cat claws up an irreplaceable piece of antique furniture her mother left her, she’s in a funk for three days. If I forget to give her an important phone message that her sister called and “had to talk,” or if someone forgets to put the ham back in the refrigerator after making a midnight snack and leaves out all kinds of dirty dishes, there’s always some dramatic scene that makes “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?” look like a Disney comedy.
I don’t know if it’s the constant darkness or the cabin fever that’s making her so tense, but the tiniest little thing seems to get on her nerves. If I make the slightest noise — say I accidentally drop a fork into the garbage disposal — it sets her off. If my coffee mug slips out of my hand at the top of the stairs and stains the carpet and the wallpaper on the way down and shatters when it hits the floor, she jumps. If I flip through the TV channels with the clicker, she grabs it out of my hand and says, “Stop it, will ya? Pick something and watch it, don’t keep flipping through the channels.”
Like a lot of people, she just can’t handle winter no matter how cushy she’s got it. The only time Sue gets out of the house is to shovel the snow in the driveway, or to scrape the snow off the roof, or to knock the 3-foot-long icicles off the gutters, or to spread ashes on the walkway so she can get the mail without falling on her butt. If that’s all I had to do, I’d be depressed, too. But to do it in the dark? That’s totally unfair to her.
I tried talking to her about it.
“You know that feeling you get in the middle of winter, when everything and everybody seems to get on your nerves?”
“Shut up,” she said.
It’s great that she’s speaking to me again, but can you see what I mean about the relentless darkness? It’s getting to her. I could understand it if she lived with a miserable drunk or a womanizing jerk or a babbling fool, but she spends all winter in the house with me. What’s not to like? It’s puzzling. Face it, sometimes you just can’t make people happy no matter what you do. Maybe that’s why bears hibernate in the winter. So they don’t kill each other.
But, finally, the days are getting longer, if only a minute at a time. In a month or two she should be back to her old, normal self. Her old, normal, grumpy self.
Jim Mullen contributes regularly to Entertainment Weekly, where he can be reached at jim_mullen@ew.com.