They gave me an extra hour and I still managed to be late. That is the whole story of daylight saving time in my house. I woke up, looked at the clock, felt like a genius for about four seconds, and then spent the rest of the day arguing with every appliance I own about what time it actually is. If you came here looking for funny daylight saving time jokes, congratulations. You found a man who just lived through one, and he is still not sure what time he lived through it at.
Funny Daylight Saving Time Jokes, From a Man With Eleven Clocks and Zero Agreements
I have eleven clocks in my house. I counted. Eleven. And right now, not a single one of them agrees with another one. The phone says one thing, the stove says another, the car says a third, and the clock on the wall just sits there smiling like it knows something I don’t. It doesn’t know anything. It ran out of battery in the spring and I have been too lazy to fix it, so it has been right twice a day for months and wrong the rest of the time, which honestly makes it the most honest clock in the house.
Changing the clocks is supposed to take five minutes. In my house it takes a full expedition. I need a ladder, a chair, a flashlight, and a level of patience I simply do not possess before coffee. I get halfway through, lose track of which ones I already changed, and end up changing the same clock twice. Now the bedroom clock is two hours off in the wrong direction, and I am walking around like a time traveler who took a wrong turn and landed in his own kitchen.
My favorite part is the car. The car clock is the final boss of daylight saving time. The manual is gone, the buttons make no sense, and every time I press one it changes the radio station instead of the hour. So for about half the year my car lives in a different time zone than I do. Passengers get in and say, “Your clock is wrong.” No, it isn’t wrong. It’s just on car time. Car time is a real place. It’s wherever I gave up.
The Microwave Clock Is a Time Capsule
The microwave clock is not a clock. It is a museum exhibit. That thing has been blinking the wrong time since a power outage years ago, and nobody in this house has ever once looked at it and thought, “Yes, that is the time.” We look at it the way you look at a painting in a museum. Nice. Old. Completely useless for telling time.
So when the time changes, the microwave does not change with us. It just keeps blinking its own private history, like a guy at a party telling the same story from years ago while everybody else has moved on. I could fix it. I know I could fix it. I have watched a video about fixing it. But fixing it would mean admitting that I am the kind of person who reads a microwave manual, and I have decided I am not that person. I am the kind of person who heats up leftovers in the dark and guesses.
And the stove is no better. The stove clock is set by holding down two buttons at the same time while standing on one foot and reciting a password, as far as I can tell. I tried once. I accidentally set a timer for nine hours, started the self-cleaning cycle, and nearly locked myself out of my own oven. The oven has not forgiven me. The oven still thinks it is an hour ahead, and frankly, after what I did to it, it has earned the right to be wrong.
My Dog Did Not Get the Memo
Nobody told the dog about the time change. Nobody ever tells the dog. The dog does not care about Congress, or farmers, or saving daylight, or any of the reasons we supposedly do this. The dog cares about dinner, and dinner is now an hour late according to the only clock that matters, which is the dog’s stomach.
So the dog stares at me. Not a normal stare. The deep, disappointed, “you have personally betrayed me” stare. The dog follows me into the kitchen, sits by the empty bowl, and sighs loud enough to be heard in the next room. I try to explain. I say, “Buddy, we gained an hour.” The dog hears “gained an hour” and understands it as “you are withholding food for fun.” I give in early, because I am weak, and now the dog eats at the old time, the new time, and a third bonus time he invented just by looking sad near the pantry.
The dog also wakes me up at the old time, which is now the new wrong time, which means I am awake an hour early staring at the ceiling, listening to a dog breathe directly into my face like a tiny, furry alarm clock that cannot be snoozed. I gained an hour of sleep, and the dog spent it for me before I even opened my eyes.
The Extra Hour Is the Biggest Scam Going
Everybody talks about the extra hour like it is a gift. “You get an extra hour of sleep!” No, I don’t. I get an extra hour of lying awake wondering why I am awake, followed by an extra hour of being confused about every appointment I have. I did not gain an hour. I gained an hour of paperwork, except the paperwork is just me walking around the house muttering, “Wait, is it six or seven?”
And where does the extra hour even go? I never see it. Nobody ever says, “Hey, remember that extra hour? I spent it learning Italian.” No. Everybody spends it the same way: confused, slightly groggy, eating dinner in the dark and wondering why it feels like midnight at five in the afternoon. We do not save daylight. We just move it to a shelf we cannot reach and then complain that it is dark when we get home.
The worst part is the darkness. One day you are driving home in sunshine, feeling like a person with a life. The next day you leave work and it is pitch black, and suddenly you are a character in a horror movie just trying to find your car. I walked into my own house in the dark, tripped over a shoe I left there myself, and blamed the time change. That is the power of daylight saving time. It makes you a victim of your own shoes.
Nobody Knows What Time It Is, and Everybody Pretends They Do
Here is my favorite part of the whole mess: everybody walks around pretending they have it figured out. People show up early and act like they planned it. People show up late and say “time change” like it is a legal defense. I showed up to a thing an hour early once, sat in the parking lot, and told everyone I got there early because I am “very organized.” I was not organized. I was a victim of a clock in my kitchen that I changed twice and a clock in my car that I never changed at all.
We should just pick a time and stay there. That is my platform. I am running for president of my own house on a single issue: no more changing the clocks. The microwave can keep its wrong time. The car can keep its wrong time. The dog can keep eating whenever the dog wants, which is always, immediately, right now. And I will keep my hour, not as a gift from the government, but as the one hour a year where I sit on the couch, look at eleven clocks that all disagree with each other, and realize I have absolutely no idea what time it is.
Which, now that I think about it, is the same as every other day. I just finally have an excuse.