CHANGING THE CLOCK…SO THE KIDS WILL GO TO BED

Today was a very busy day, and when the kids got home from school it just got busier. You know the drill, carpool, karate, art class, dinner, homework…and I still had a couple hours of work to do myself.

Daylight Savings Time had just ended a few days ago and the boys were having a hard time adjusting. Personally, I’m a big fan of the whole “spring back, fall forward” idea–I’ll take as much daylight as I can get, thank you–but as a parent I’m not sure I’m a big fan. It was just after yelling at them to do their homework for the third time and right before their seventh argument of the night when inspiration struck–I was going to reinstate Daylight Savings Time.

With the boys distracted for the moment by how much they hated each other and how mean their dad was, I hurriedly moved all the clocks forward. What moments before was a seemingly impossible 90 minutes until bedtime had suddenly changed to a much more manageable 20 minutes. And it worked; the boys weren’t the least bit suspicious.

Oh sure, when I told them they had only 20 minutes before their day was done they moaned and whined and once again reminded me how mean I was–but they would have done that anyway. All I had done was make it happen a little sooner. Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

So here I sit at my computer, finishing up my work for the night. It’s barely 8:10, but the only sounds in the house are the dishwasher running and the clock ticking on the wall. Now if I can just remember to reset the clocks to the correct time before I call it a night, I will have pulled off the perfect caper. They say crime doesn’t pay, but if this heavenly silence is the punishment I get then I’ll do it every time. And it just may be tomorrow.

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