DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Spring ahead? This week is a holiday for morning people. It is when the full effects of daylight-saving time kick in. And it's a time many people of good taste regard with dread every year.
Morning people — maybe because they get up earlier and issue memos first — rule the workplace, supervise the restaurants and are especially aggressive in their control of school systems. They want you to feel as though getting up an hour earlier is good for you.
Don't believe them.
We are an oddly judgmental people on the matter of sleeping and rising. Me, I'm a night guy if left to my own devices. I have seldom, however, been left to my own devices.
When I had a lifestyle in harmony with my circadian rhythms, I found society was fighting me.
I get my kids to school at about 7 a.m. They are not morning people, either. This means we average about six hours of sleep a night. That is why the opinions expressed in this space so seldom make sense.
But the kids, at least, have an excuse. That's how teens sleep.
Most parents can tell you that little kids will happily pop out of bed before dawn and eat multicolored breakfast cereal in the dark. The same kids, when older, will whine there's nothing to eat while dragging themselves out of bed at 10 a.m.
They don't do this merely to drive you crazy. That's a side benefit. They do this because their sleep cycles are like that. Scientific research has found kids' sleep cycles change in their teens. It's brain chemistry. One more thing in the puzzling neural and hormonal soup of the teenager.
School systems have responded to these findings by starting high school at times traditionally associated with the arrival of bakery trucks. Go figure.
As a result, most teens don't sleep enough. A study of adolescent sleep patterns in 1998 found 19-year-olds average seven hours and four minutes of sleep a night.
This is made worse right after daylight-saving day. First period in most high schools on daylight-saving Monday is a sleep-deprivation festival.
It's slow in coming, but a backlash is building among the sleep deprived. A bill to encourage high schools to start classes at 9 a.m. was introduced in the last Congress but languished in committee.. A Minnesota Medical Association campaign for later high school starting times has brightened first periods across that progressive state.
What will early risers do when they have extra time between rising and school? They'll think of something. They always do.
Let us pray it doesn't involve leaf blowers.
Mark Lane is a columnist for The Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal. He may be reached at mark.lane@news-jrnl.com.