So here we are, at that time of year wherein we have to “give back” the hour that we “gained” back when we fell back in fall.

It’s not for me to say that for the vast majority of the country, the practice is arcane and distracting.  But it did spawn an interesting idea, perhaps and probably influenced by my short story from yesterday.

Time.  Never enough of it, always slipping away.  Sometimes it creeps by and stretches out for miles, other times it’s gone before you can say “Sharknado, I’m late.”  So here, we have this bizarre practice.  A bit of give and take.

In the fall, you get this extra hour.  In the spring, you give it back.

Put aside the fact that the extra hour comes in the middle of the night.  They just say that to throw you off. Time is time, and just like energy, nobody but nobody can destroy it nor create it.  No gain without sacrifice.  No yin without yang.

So we have this extra hour in November because society decides that we do, and then we skip an hour in March to bring balance to the force.  But all we did was move the hands on the clock; we might as well have switched out the labels on our day-of-the-week underwear.  What, you don’t have those?

But what if we actually – really – honest-to-goodness – gained and lost time once every year?  Even if it were just an hour, imagine the possibilities.  You cut a bargain with the gods (or devils) of time.  Sign it in blood, because, you know, that makes it for realsies.  You get to live one hour over again, and then you have to lose out on an hour as payment.  What could be better?  Didn’t kiss that girl at the end of the date?  Go back and try it again, for the low, low price of missing out on an hour in the office.  Got to the bank five minutes after it closed and thus missed your mortgage payment and they’re gonna repossess your house?  No, they’re not, because you just went back in time and cashed that check.  And you just have to give up one hour of sleepytime.  Wanna relive the time you found that $5 bill on the sidewalk and declared it the best day ever?  Knock yourself out.  You only have to skip over the hour when the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Photo Shoot bus broke down in front of your house and all the models had to pile in and borrow your phone and your shower.  Well, you can’t win EVERY time.

But why stop at an hour?  Would you give up a day to try one over again?  How about a week?  A year?  Would you give up a year wearing adult diapers and puttering around the house remembering the good old days to try another year in your twenties and fix everything you screwed up?  Pass on your fifties entirely for the chance to be a teenager again?  Or maybe you could skip over the boring kid years and gain some extra time on the back end.

I think there’s something there.  If time is so insubstantial that we can simply shuffle the board around and say we’re on the same page, then what does it even mean?  Never mind, forget I asked that, let me just go back to watching this video of a dog saying “I love you.”