LJWorld.com

Remember how you felt last year when you gained an hour as a gift from daylight-saving time? That's how it is moving back to the Central Standard Time Zone. You gain a wonderful hour right away when you move, but it's a gift that keeps on giving. I'm convinced after living in several time zones, that people in CST are happier and better adjusted because they routinely get an extra hour of sleep. Here's my theory as to why that is.

Back East, Jay Leno and David Letterman come on at 11:35 p.m., so if it's part of your ritual to hold off falling asleep until after Jay's monologue, then you can't go to bed until nearly midnight. If you feel a need for Conan O'Brien's jerking and mugging, then you don't get to go to sleep until after 1 a.m. I have a perfectly sane psychologist friend in Philadelphia who needs to see Conan before dropping off to sleep. She is counting the days until he replaces Jay Leno so she can go to bed earlier.

Here, late-night comedy junkies get to go to bed by 11 p.m. - if monologues are their thing. Or worst case, 11:30 p.m. if they desire to stay tuned for every last excruciatingly boring guest interview.

When I lived in Chicago, way over there on the edge of Central, back in my 20s - and back in the day when you could actually make a living being freelance writers - both my writer husband and I worked from home, usually juggling a half-dozen assignments at a time. No matter how intense the deadline, we stopped short at 5:30 p.m. for Walter Cronkite, the authority figure for our generation. We dived into the couch and took in the "CBS Evening News," then local Chicago news anchored by Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson. After that, it was time to make dinner. Before we knew it, it was 10:30 p.m., and after Johnny Carson's monologue it was time to go to bed.

Moving to the East Coast was our undoing. Suddenly, we seldom got more than six hours of sleep. We worked feverishly until 6:30 p.m. before breaking for evening news - and sometimes we didn't stop working for the news. It's like when you've passed your usual mealtime, after a while you don't feel hungry.

We pretend not to be tied to TV, but face it, even if we don't actually watch it, we often use it for a clock. Many of us set our morning routine by "The Today Show" or "Good Morning America." CNN's "Morning Show" already screwed with our minds a couple of years ago when it began the show at 6 a.m. instead of 7 on the East Coast.

But in upping start times, morning TV was just trying to adjust to the realities of life in the urban East. Sometime during the 1990s, we East Coasters (and West Coasters and some large Midwest cities, too) started getting up an hour earlier. That had to do with clogged arteries - the ones leading into our cities. In the Washington, D.C., area it was not uncommon for commuters in the outer suburbs to start their drive at 5 a.m., which meant getting up at 4 a.m.

Since my morning commute was down one flight of stairs, I was immune to this insanity, right? Wrong. For one thing, we lived right alongside I-270, a major route into the city, so now the great morning roar started at 4 a.m. I tried to learn to sleep above the din. But then my daughter turned 14. High school in suburban Maryland began at 7:25 a.m. She had to be there by 7 a.m. to get through choked hallways in time to reach her first class. So 5:45 a.m. was when I had to start pulling her out of bed. Teenagers should never have to go to school that early, and their parents should never have to turn into ogres to roust them out at such an hour.

Making matters worse, after I became an empty-nester, I foolishly went back to teaching high school for a while, and now I was getting up at 5:15 a.m. to be there at 6:30 a.m. and attempt to teach great literature to kids with their heads down on their desks. Truth be told, I desperately wanted to put my head down and snooze through first period, too. After all the research about the biological clock of teenagers and their need for extra sleep, it is incomprehensible that any high school anywhere would inflict a 7:25 a.m. start time. Surely it ranks as child abuse.

But all that is behind me, now safe in Central. Here, wonderfully, instantly, all has changed. I go to bed an hour earlier and sleep an hour later. I've actually gained two extra hours of sleep a night, and I feel myself slowly returning to sanity. You have no idea. The whole East Coast - our financial centers, our media centers, our government centers - are totally screwed up because they're all sleep-deprived. It may actually be that simple. It may even explain the volatility of the stock market.

When I sit silently in restaurants in Lawrence and look around me and listen, at the tables around me, everyone seems to be laughing, talking, lively, happy - awake! I have never seen so many happy people in one place. I think it's because you are getting enough sleep.

Sit in any restaurant in New York, Washington or other East Coast city, and you will hear couples arguing over dinner, kids screeching, friends kvetching and moaning about their lives. The conversations you will overhear on cell phones are even worse. Yes, you may hear some laughter - shrill, out-of-control, not genuine, not nice, more like laughter after a snide comment about how bad somebody looks.

Last week's announcement by the American Psychological Association that stress levels are much higher in East and West Coast residents than in Midwesterners was no surprise to me. The quality of life is not good in our coastal urban areas. People are not kind. People are not happy. People are stressed. People are sleep deprived.

OK. I'm sure there are also sleep-deprived Lawrencians. And not everyone is happy. But I watch you - at sidewalk sales, at concerts, in parks, at the farmers market, in restaurants, in checkout lines. I see you biking on country roads, boating on lakes, walking on trails, meandering downtown with baby strollers, sitting on porches. You Lawrencians are, by and large, a well-adjusted, well-rested, happy bunch. And I'm proud to be among you.

Copyright 2012 The Lawrence Journal-World. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. We strive to uphold our values for every story published.