By Greg Gagliardi

This upcoming Sunday morning, most of America will be setting their clocks ahead one hour as part of daylight saving time, or — at the very least — will be waking up wondering why their cell phone times no longer match the times on their microwaves. This Sunday will therefore be a 23-hour day, and already people are panicking that this loss of an hour may result in a lot less viewing of “Perry Mason” re-runs. But have no fear, faithful readers, because there is hope for those wishing to consolidate their usual 24 hours of activity into just 23 hours, and it doesn’t involve less sleeping…

Upon waking up on Sunday at 10 a.m. instead of the usual 11 a.m. (it’s amazing how well I know my readers), begin the morning by yelling, “Ah, I have one less hour! One less hour! What should I do? I have one less hour!” I would recommend yelling this for approximately one hour. Not only will this drive the point home to whomever happens to hear you, but it also essentially shortens the day to 22 hours, which makes the day’s routines even more challenging to complete. And that’s a good thing, because challenges are what life — and “American Gladiators” — is all about…

Of course it will be noon by the time this yelling is over, but if not for daylight saving time, it would only be 11 a.m. Think about that: the morning has just turned into afternoon simply because of some silly clock rule that nobody understands. Isn’t this a bit odd? Sure, it is, and what better way to show your disgust than by yelling, “Ah, it’s noon and it could have been the morning! What’s going on? It’s already noon!” for about three hours, bringing the time to around 3 p.m. During the three hours of shouting, other methods of communication should be utilized, such as text messaging and e-mailing. These days people love to receive e-mail from people they don’t know, especially chain letters, so make sure to send e-mails to names that you can assume are owned by people, such as BigTimeRubenStuddardFan@yahoo.com and BigMacsRule@gmail.com. Just don’t send anything to me, as I’m still recovering from the bad luck brought to me by a chain letter six years ago…

After 3 p.m., it is time to eat lunch. After all, large amounts of panicking works up an appetite. Lunch at 3 p.m. may seem a little bit late, but remember that it would have been 2 p.m. if not for this time adjustment, and 2 p.m. is on the cusp of an acceptable lunch time. It will be hard to enjoy lunch considering this time situation, so to make it easier, use your Facebook and MySpace accounts to change your status to “… eating a LATE lunch” and then write on everyone’s wall to show them how late the lunch really is. Try something like, “That’s right, Ruben, it is 3:05 already and I am still eating my sandwich. Can you believe this? 3:05!”

In the interest of your online reputation, you will need to take a few hours to respond to people when they send you messages and wall posts along the lines of “Get over it, it’s just an hour” and “Time is just a state of mind.” By the time you are done, it will be around 6 p.m., which is a good time to eat dinner — although you won’t be hungry because of that late lunch — and then watch some evening television in order to sulk some more. By around 10 p.m., your body should already be adjusted to the clock-changing mayhem, but by that point, there will only be two more hours in the day. That’s not really enough time to accomplish anything, so just go to bed and start over the next morning. I love daylight saving time…

But I digress.

Greg Gagliardi is a journalism and English teacher in NJ who has been writing “Progressive Revelations” since 1998 (http://www.ProgressiveRevelations.com). His first book, “Hiding Newspapers on Zebras” was first published in February of 2006. A new Facebook fan site can be joined at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Progressive-Revelations/9144616588?ref=mf

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