I have heard so many people talk about how much they hate the coming time change (it happens a week earlier in Mexico than in the US). It has never made sense to me to make a big deal out of it. Usually the people that I hear complaining about it are people who do not travel. Those of us who do have to deal with time changes on a regular basis.
Yesterday I was speaking with a lady who went on and on about how much the time change bothers her physically. Her blood pressure goes up for about a week until her body can get used to it. I think the fact that her pressure goes up has more to do with how much she is worried about the change than it is anything physical. She was quite animated in our conversation yesterday. It is obvious that she is making herself sick over it. It could very well be a physical problem, though I have never heard of anyone’s blood pressure going out of whack just because they moved from one time zone to another. I very much tend to think that the bigger problem comes from how much she is making an issue out of it. Interestingly, the time change in the spring (when she ‘loses’ an hour) does not bother her.
One lady I met a couple of years ago stormed around for two weeks ranting about how much she hates the time change. “They are robbing me of an hour of sleep!” “That is my time! My hour! What gives them the right to think they can take it away from me?” She was not joking either. She was so overly excited about it that I thought she was joking. I laughed at her…and then found out she was serious.
No one is stealing an hour from them, or giving it back later. I realize that it takes and shifts the time that they get up in relation to where the sun is in the sky. Don’t they realize that sunrise/sunset changes every day? It just happens more slowly on a daily basis than the twice a year hour change. I don’t know that I have ever felt like I was cheated out of an hour. I just go to bed when I am ready and get up when I am ready.
Its not only Mexico that people rant and rave about the time change. It happens in the US also.
Farmers and ranchers all over the world have always started their day at sunup and quit at sundown no matter what the clock said. So I am like the travelers, “What’s the big deal?” The time change doesn’t seem to bother the cows, bees, ants, birds, and other animals. Only Homo-sapiens seem to be up tight.