When the Moon Hits Your Eye

Now that daylight saving time has been entered into the record books for another year, I find myself humming a familiar tune based on a 1953 Dean Martin song: “When the moon hits your eye at 4:45, it's November.”

It is a melancholy little number, particularly if you happen to be outdoors looking for the sun, which has apparently packed its belongings and departed for parts unknown. November is the month when a man gets up in the morning, looks out the window, and wonders whether he has accidentally overslept until next Tuesday.

By four-thirty in the afternoon, the darkness has settled in so completely that even the neighborhood cats have begun carrying flashlights.

There is something unnatural about eating supper while it is still technically afternoon. A fellow sits down with a plate of meatloaf at five o'clock and feels as though he ought to be wearing pajamas and apologizing to his mother.

The government calls this standard time, which is a curious expression for something that makes you feel as though somebody has stolen an hour from your day and replaced it with a wet sock.

I tried explaining the arrangement to my dog, but he was unimpressed. He maintains that breakfast should be served according to the position of his stomach, not some bureaucrat's opinion of the sun.

And perhaps he has a point. After all, if the moon can hit your eye at 4:45, why can't the government arrange for it to hit somebody else's?

Preferably the fellow who invented standard time.