A Friendly Reminder with a Dash of Catholic Guilt

Good old Daylight Savings Time. So freaking confusing. I never know whether its EDT or EST and whenever anyone tries to explain it to me I just end up forgetting until the next person feels the need to clear away my confusion. Parts of Indiana don't even observe DST.  Or actually, now the entire state doesn't. Or maybe it does, but it didn't used to. I just remember my dad telling me that at Notre Dame they didn't change their clocks. Okay, according to Wikipedia, Indiana became the 48th state to observe DST in 2006. But, apparently, it's a very controversial topic to people from Indiana. See? Confusing! I'm digressing. My point is, before the times of cell phones, it was easy to forget changing your clocks. 

When I was little, we went to church every other Sunday. Our family was like the child of divorced parents, the church only got custody on alternate weekends. We had to go enough so that my mother didn't feel like a fairweather Catholic that only went on Christmas and Easter. I grew up honestly thinking I was more Christian than my friends who only went on holidays. And then I'd be more likely to go to heaven, obviously. As for my Jewish friends, I didn't think they were any less likely to go to heaven. I thought they would go to heaven, but their heaven would be like a big fun Bat Mitzvah with everyone dancing and singing and getting lifted up on chairs. The song "Sunrise, Sunset" would be playing on constant repeat in the background, a soundtrack to the Yiddish afterlife. I loved that song growing up. I think I always secretly wanted to go to Jewish heaven.

One Sunday, we got dressed and went to church and when we arrived everyone was leaving. We pulled up to the front and my dad dropped off my mother so she could ask what was going on. She came back to the car and started explaining to my dad, in angry Spanish, that we forgot to change the clocks. We were an hour late to mass, and it was already over. It was always a production to get all of us dressed and to church on time so my parents were kind of annoyed at themselves for having messed up the timing. My siblings and I though — we couldn't be happier. For years afterwards, I would think of DST fondly, because it got me out of going to mass that one Sunday. I say this with a twinge of Catholic guilt, because I've become that person that only goes to mass on Christmas and Easter. Well, actually, just Christmas. I aim for Easter once in a while, if I can sucker someone else into going with me. One Easter in college a friend of mine had a costume party. I dressed up as a Catholic schoolgirl and my atheist boyfriend at the time dressed up as a priest. Every time we kissed that night, I felt like a sinner. To this day, I look at pictures of that Easter where I chose to get wasted and mock the church instead of going to mass, and I feel overwhelmed with guilt. It's not like I can blame that on any random confusing time change.

Oh well. There's always Jewish heaven. I'll just have to make sure I keep all rabbi and Moses costumes out of my Halloween options.