Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 30, 1990                   TAG: 9003300454
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THIS TIME-CHANGE BUSINESS IS GOING TO DRIVE ME CRAZY

It starts at 2 a.m. Sunday and will only seem to go on forever.

It's sort of like the college basketball season - except there is no Final Four.

I don't think the federal government requires you to stay up past midnight so that you can turn your clocks ahead at the very hour this annual disaster strikes.

But the day may come.

It is this kind of thing that made me want to cheat on my census form - like saying my house is worth $1.2 million or penciling in the information that I am actually a Mutant Ninja Turtle named Michaelangelo.

I have set aside the whole day for moving clocks and watches ahead one hour.

My digital watch - which has a defective Button A - will take me about six hours, and when I am through the date will show as October 4, 1999, and the time will still be wrong.

And the really neat alarm clock feature will start buzzing every 30 minutes, and I will be tempted to end it all with the claw hammer - which has been hidden from me for several days now.

There are three other digital clocks or watches to be adjusted, and I will be very nearly insane before the day is over.

And ahead are all these wonderful days that the federal government has lengthened for certain citizens who actually like to do yard work until 9 p.m. on days that have made the deodorant industry in this country what it is today.

You know: "Yes, sir, my George loves daylight-saving time. He just glories in working in the earth. I guess you could say my George has a green thumb."

I would like to break George's thumb and give him a very sore head.

I mean, what's he doing out in that heat? If we must have these extra hours of daylight, let's be civilized and spend them sipping vodka and tonic.

Yeah. I know. George would never taste the stuff, right? That's the way those daylight-saving people are.

Then, you have these people, many of them called Herbert, who love the extra daylight because they can play golf after they get off from work.

They always dress to resemble Arnold Palmer as closely as possible and they have all these funny golf stories that will drive an anti-daylight-saving person nuts.

I'll get through it again, I guess.

But that George character with the green thumb should avoid me at all times.