Jon Dawson: Local mayor campaigns to change Daylight Savings Time

Daylight savings time is here, and with it, a controversial proposal from a local mayor.

While most of the world now deems stonewashed jeans and mullet haircuts passé, I recently stood behind a gentleman in line at the post office who seems to be doing just fine with both. I was curious, so I asked if the stonewashed jeans and the mullet had anything to do with a Halloween costume.

"No," the guy said. "I stopped following trends in 1986. My favorite movie was Top Gun and I was certain it would never be topped, so I stopped going to movies. That’s also the year I bought the very jeans I'm wearing now. To be honest, the jeans were a little stiff, and they've just recently been broken in properly. As for the mullet, that haircut is just as timeless as Whitesnake's music. I mean, they just used their song 'Here I Go Again' in a brand new commercial for Metamucil. Do you think they’ll be using Ke$ha in fiber supplement commercials 30 years from now? Her music is totally grody.”

As it turns out, the guy with the stonewashed jeans is Gene Sutton, a relative of Bucklesberry Mayor Parrott Sutton. Gene's reluctance to change, it seems, is in his genes. As some of you may remember, I interviewed Parrott Sutton for a Daylight Savings Time features a while back. He too was not a fan of change.

"I think some people use daylight saving time as an excuse to get to church late, long after the plate has been passed," Bucklesberry Mayor Parrott Sutton said. "By the time everybody figures out how to change the clocks in their cars it's time to switch back. I know times change but the world is getting a little too complicated. Used to be if you bought a television, all you had to do was plug it in and turn it on. Nowadays, a television installation requires the same number of people that got us to the moon in 1969."

I was curious to find out what Parrott Sutton had been up to, so I invited his nephew Gene to join me for breakfast at a local restaurant on Saturday.

"Uncle Parrott has been real busy with his Netflix show, 'Farmers on Tractors Eating Biscuits'," Gene said. "He's a frugal sort, so he's banking most of his pay from the show, but he's set aside part of it for a good cause."

That good cause is a campaign to overhaul the Daylight Savings Time program.

"Personally, I think Daylight Savings Time is about as useless as the 'g’ in 'lasagna'," Sutton said. "But if we must have it, I think it should be restructured to better suit the crazy times we live in."

Under Sutton's version of Daylight Savings Time, 8 a.m. wouldn't start until what we now know to be 10 a.m.

"When you're driving to work early in the morning, no matter how you rearrange the sun visors in your vehicle, the sun is going to blind you like the time Uncle Emmit tried to dig taters in yoga pants," Sutton said. "If you move 8 a.m. back to 10 a.m., you'll be able to drive to work without retina damage."

Further changes would involve actually stopping all clocks on Dec. 20th and not restarting them until Jan. 8th.

"Have you ever tried to get anything done from Dec. 20th through Jan. 1?" Sutton asked. "I'd sooner re-dig the Panama Canal with a spoon than try to get anyone to do any work that time of year. Additionally, that first week back from Christmas and New Year's should all be four-hour days. The average adult goes at around 90-mph for 10hrs a day all year. Then around the end of December, they get to slow down and eat enough carbs to power a rocket to the moon, which puts them in a woozy, relaxed state. It's inhuman to launch someone back into full work mode if they're in the throes of the itus."

Parrott Sutton's upcoming book Act Like a Lady, Think Like A Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Gravy is being released by Faber & Faber in 2020.

Jon Dawson's humor columns are published weekly by Neuse News. Contact Jon at jon@neusenews.com and www.jondawson.com.