It was somewhere around 5:50 a.m. when the phone rang. It was my friend with whom I usually ride to church.

"I'll be over there in a few minutes," he told me. "Do you want anything from the restaurant?"

He always stops by the same fast food restaurant every Sunday morning for breakfast. He always calls me to see if I want anything and I almost always say no. It's always at the same time, and I'd be willing to bet he usually orders the same sandwich.

The church offers breakfast most every Sunday morning from 8 a.m. until around 9 a.m., but he eats his breakfast at 7 a.m. Besides, he has a fast-food breakfast sandwich addiction, although I'm not sure he's able to admit the problem, as in, "Hello, my name is Rich and I'm addicted to fast food breakfast sandwiches."

He's always 10 minutes early. I'm the prompt's antagonist, a late yin for an early yang. I'm just barely on time or even a few minutes late. If I'm ever early, I'm very, very early. If I'm going to be 10 minutes early, I subconsciously find something to do where I'm at rather than wait for whatever to happen where I'm going. I was born this way. In urging me to be more prompt, my mother used to tell me,

"You'll be late for your own funeral." I thought that a poor example. In fact, being late for one's own funeral sounds like a very good idea indeed. I'll show up for death as late as possible, thank you very much. If I were allowed to know the very day that would happen, I feel sure that I would try to stall the inevitable with at least one more cup of coffee or one more anything.

But I wasn't thinking of all that when the call came. After all, it was 5:50 a.m. and I was closer to the netherworld mentally than wakefulness.

After looking at the bleary clock numbers, I asked groggily, "Do you know what time it is?"

"About 7 a.m.," he said.

I knew that the time had changed the night prior at 2 a.m. But my clock in the bedroom is some kind of computerized model. It's supposed to set itself automatically. The clock, which is digital and tracks the days of the week, the month and the year and goodness knows what else, only asks for the time zone when it is put into operation.

I was a bit incredulous. Surely he hadn't set his clock properly and I was being awakened early as a result. "Let me go in here and check the time to see which one of us is going crazy," I said, not sure that I wanted the answer.

So I stumbled into the living room to greet the day. And there, on the clock I had programmed the night before, was the time, clear as day. Well, in this case it was clear as night, since it was still dark. The time was 6:50 a.m. and I was due to leave in mere minutes.

Immediately I felt that peculiar rush of energy that can only come when one realizes that he has gotten up late. That's the same energy that usually causes people to become frantic while hopping up and down trying to put on every article of clothing simultaneously while shaving and brushing the teeth. It's a great time to whack off one's nose with a razor. In the interest of safety, I opted to forego shaving in favor of making coffee, filling the stove with wood and getting ready to go.

The time change is always confusing. I move the clock forward an hour, which means that it's actually an hour earlier than the clocks say, so it gets dark an hour later. Therefore, is it actually an hour later than I feel like it is or is it still the same time? I've found that my automatic wake-up time of somewhere around 6 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. has been disrupted.

I need to get my circadian rhythm back in synchronization with reality. Supposedly, human's naturally are on an internal clock that runs some 24 hours and 11 minutes. These circadian (from the Latin for 'about a day') rhythms supposedly affect our sleep and wake patterns, our body temperature cycle and our hunger. Plants and animals and even one-celled organisms display variations of such daily routines. In fact, most paramecium brush their teeth at exactly 6:37 a.m., Eastern Standard Time. Squirrels usually turn off the news at 11 p.m. and cuddle up with their mates and rabbits generally go to bed a hare after dark. What does all this mean? I'm not sure, but I'm hoping someone reset the clocks for all those animals so the roosters will still know when to crow.

As for my own adjustment, I soon realized what had happened with the clock. The alarm clock, which was programmed long ago, changes the time on the first Saturday in April or so, whenever the time change used to be. So, now that I've changed it manually, it will actually change itself forward another hour on some upcoming morning.

I'm sure I'll be waking up around 5 a.m., thinking that it is actually around 6 a.m. I will then end up calling my friend, concerned. When the phone rings at 5 a.m. or so, I'm sure he'll ask me, "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

He'll probably have to tell me, since I'll likely forget all this by then.