Daylight Saving Time: The Meeting
I often fantasize about being in the first meetings about things. The notion occurred to me spontaneously almost 40 years ago, as I was taking my inaugural drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a mind-boggling feat of ingenuity and engineering.
I immediately envisioned that first meeting in which the attendees were scratching their heads, trying to overcome the seemingly impossible challenge of getting motor-vehicle traffic across the Bay from Virginia Beach to Cape Charles without obstructing shipping traffic in the Bay. That was the historic moment at which Albert Murfwhiffle, the Director of Public Works for Virginia Beach and a civil engineer, slapped his forehead, jumped up, and blurted out: “Hey! Ya know what we could do?” And the rest, as they say …
Now that we’re a couple of days into Daylight Saving Time, I was wishing I could have been in the meeting between the World Affairs Council (WAC) and God in which the suggestion of more daylight was first broached.
Since the meeting took place in the early 20th century, I hadn’t been born yet. But because I am, in God’s estimation, “a Hell of a guy” (God doesn’t get nearly enough appreciation for his love of wordplay), I was able to get a transcript of the meeting. And because I am, indeed, a Hell of a guy, I share it with you here, verbatim.
The Transcript
Since there were roughly 50 to 75 sovereign countries in the world at the time the WAC met with God (depending on who was warring with or had been colonized by whom), since each of those sovereign countries had a representative on the WAC, and since God was able to talk with all of the representatives, all at the same time, even though all of them remained in their native countries because … well … God, the individual members of the WAC are not identified. Rather, their citations in the transcript are designated simply as WAC:
God: WAC. Didn’t that used to be the Women’s Army Corp?
WAC: Yes. But we’re not allowed to use woman or women anymore. Political sensitivity, gender dysphoria, and all that. And PAC, which could have been the abbreviation for Person’s Army Corp, seems to have taken on some other meaning altogether distasteful.
God: Oh. Right. Ya know, back when I begat Adam and Eve …
WAC: With all due respect, Sir. When they were the only two people on earth, their only special interest was staying in the Garden. Since you gave them the boot, things have gotten a bit more complicated.
God: True dat.
WAC: At any rate, Sir, the reason we called this meeting is to ask you to give us more daylight.
God: Jesus!
WAC: What?
God: No. Not what. Who. I want my son to hear what you yahoos want.
WAC: Yes. Of course, Sir. He’s certainly welcome. But we’d really like to talk about the daylight.
God: Wow. I don’t know. At the Creation, I thought I had things pretty much under control. It’s all spelled out in Genesis if you have time for a little light reading, no pun intended.
WAC: None taken, Sir. And a few of us have skimmed the book. You really did a lovely job on it. But things have changed quite a bit since then.
God: Like what?
WAC: Well, there are more people on the planet, for one thing. That means we need more food. So, we need more light for grazing, growing, and photosynthesis. And with what seems to be an uptick in criminality and general nastiness, we’re thinking more light and less dark couldn’t hurt.
God: Do you have statistics for any of this stuff?
WAC: Sir, we have Big Data.
God: Oh, shit …
WAC: Yeah. We don’t mean to be heavy-handed here. But with technologies like Hadoop, Sparks, Data Lakes, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and machine learning — and with big words like innovation, disruption, ecosystems, the Internet of Things, and … wait. Why are you laughing?
God: Are you clowns for real? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ….
WAC: What?!
God: Can any of you bozos even define that nonsense, let alone use it? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha … You’re killin’ me.
WAC: But, but, but … we have structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data. We have data mining, aggregations, and algorithms. We have descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. We even have …
God: You know what you got? Nothin’! A bucket of steam. A left-handed monkey wrench. You’re the birds that laid the golden goose egg. Ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha …
WAC: Good grief! You just peed yourself!
God: Good thing I don’t wear pants. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha …
WAC: Uh … does that mean we don’t get more daylight?
God: Tell ya what. I’ll give ya 45 minutes. That’s it. And if ya don’t like it, stick it in your OLAP. You guys can’t stand to lose any more sleep anyway. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ….
The Coda
The day God dropped off the transcript, he stayed while I read it. I told him I couldn’t help but notice Daylight Saving Time was now a full hour. He conceded he felt compelled to live up to the whole merciful God thing. So, he threw ’em 15 more minutes. And looking like he was still a little uncertain, he also said he’d decided to cut the WAC some slack because at least they hadn’t tried to convince him they needed extra daylight to stop global warming.
That explanation — and those extra 15 minutes — gave me a much greater appreciation for the expression: thank God for little favors.
