Grab a snack. Get comfy. It's time for the DST fuss.

OK. I apologize, profusely, in advance.

There is a law -- or ought to be -- that every columnist who writes for the free press should be required to spend the week before the switch to daylight-saving time expounding on the rationale for staying on DST year-round.

If not a law, then we should have a special code of conduct, or unwritten rule, or a professional guideline that makes us do our jobs and convince readers about stuff.

Actually, most readers I know already are convinced we need DST all the time. That makes my job much easier.

Sure, most of the attention this week won't be on DST. It will be on the latest tweets from the Great Diverter, also known as the leader of the free world. What a setup he has. Any time the heat gets a little uncomfortable, he just tweets some nonsense. Even the most responsible journalists will drop everything to either (A) investigate a nonsensical tweet or (B) make fun of the tweeter, which is not good reporting at all.

But enough about tweeters in high places -- and I'm not talking about the nest of wrens at the top of the giant evergreen in our back yard.

Let's get serious about DST.

Our older son does sleep research at a Harvard Medical School clinic. The clinic's research has documented, over the years, the effect disruptions in sleep patterns, as well as sleep deprivation, have on us frail humans. These studies involve medical students, doctors, firefighters, police, NASA controllers, astronauts, airport screeners and on and on.

The findings of these studies are clear. It doesn't take much to garble our mental processes when you fiddle with your sleep.

But, every year we act like it's OK to fool Mother Nature. We mess with our clocks, curse our electronic time displays in our automobiles and suffer the loss of a whole hour of sleep as winter draws to a close.

That's what will happen Saturday night and Sunday morning in these parts. We will be reminded again to "spring forward" and reset our clocks for the start of DST.

This week my wife, out of the blue, said she would sure appreciate it if I would reset her car's clock, which was not reset when we abandoned DST late last year. It occurred to me that this situation might resolve itself if we just waited a few more days until Sunday rolled around. Then the clock would be correct again.

No fussing. No trying to read the itty-bitty type in the owner's manual. No blue atmospheric conditions in the garage as I search for a button that is supposed to say "Clock" somewhere on the dashboard of the car.

Well, Mr. Smarty-pants Automaker, the button doesn't say "Clock" at all. It says "Time." Maybe this is a bit of confusion that could be easily cleared up by the professional manual writers at GM.

By the way, when we set our clocks forward Saturday night, so as not to arrive at an empty church, I'm told we "lose" an hour.

Where does it go?

Really. Some of you will quickly answer by saying we "get it back" when we switch back to standard time later this year. Get it back from where? Is there a time bank somewhere I don't know about? Could I take out more than an hour? Less than an hour? What would happen to the universe if I didn't use the time bank at all? Ever. Would the time bank honchos close my account for lack of activity?

I sure hope so.

Well, I'm going to stop for now. I've been ranting about DST for as long as I can remember -- before some of you were even born. If you printed out all my columns on DST and stretched them out, end-to-end, along I-55, you could paper the highway from Cape Girardeau to New Orleans. I'm not making that up.

If it takes an act of Congress to adopt DST year-around, let's get it done. President Tweeter likes to sign executive orders. The next time sappy journalists get under his skin, maybe he could whip out an executive order establishing DST all the time. He would be such a hero. A really big hero. I mean it.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.