He Negotiated a 2 AM Curfew—Until Realizing Daylight Saving Time Stole an Hour of His Party
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Imagine being a teenager with a curfew. Would you accept whatever curfew your parents set, or would you try to push them to make it later if your friends had a later curfew?
In this story, one teenager has a 2am curfew. That seems later than any curfew I ever had as a teenager, but for the person who wrote this story, it wasn’t late enough. He wanted to stay out even later.
Fortunately for the teen, his dad didn’t pay attention to the calendar, so he was able to comply and stay out later at the same time.
Keep reading for all the details.
Dad gave me a 2:00 AM curfew… I complied
When I was about 16 or 17, like any other kid at that age, I desperately wanted to go to a party all my friends went to.
All of my friends were older than myself, so they had no curfew, or were allowed to stay very late.
My dad, however, was a pain in the butt at that time. Or at least, that was my perception. He wouldn’t let me go anywhere, and when I was allowed to go, he’d give ridiculous curfews that held no account with the nature of the event.
E.g. going to the movies at 8, but demanding to be back home at 10… that kinda limits your choices, right? And you don’t want to be that friend who puts constraints onto the group.
This seems like a pretty generous curfew.
Sorry, I digress. Anyway, that particular day, I negotiated for him to give me a later curfew.
After a while, he stated that 2 AM was the absolute latest I should be home.
That sucked, because most of my friends had a 3 AM curfew AND the party was at least a half an hour bike-ride away. So this would mean I would miss more than 1h30 of the party (yeah, severe case of FOMO here).
I tried to negotiate some more, but then I realized what date it was. Enter Malicious Compliance.
It was the perfect night to want to stay out late.
You see, it was the last weekend of October, on a Saturday. I don’t think this is the same everywhere, but in the larger part of Europe this means that Daylight Savings Time ends.
At exactly 3 AM, clocks are set back one hour.
So I went to the party, not by bike. I asked for a friend to drop me off, making sure that I would be there exactly on time.
I made sure that my dad didn’t hear me a minute too soon (because then, I would be almost an hour late!). At exactly 3 AM (or better: 2 AM for the second time), I opened the door and got in.
He proved his dad wrong.
Needless to say he was furious, demanding an immediate explanation as to why I was an hour late.
When I said I was exactly on time, pointing at his own radio-controlled watch, I could see his face turn all kinds of red, and an awesome mix of defeat and anger in his eyes.
He sent me to bed, knowing I was right, and I complied, knowing I was very wrong.
Nevertheless, it was an awesome victory!
Here’s what I’m hung up on. He was going to ride his bike home from a party at like 1:30am? That’s much later than I would want to be out riding a bike, but I’m also not 16.
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Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.
This person points out a distinction.
Another person makes a good point.
This is true.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a mom who thinks her daughter should have planned a whole two-week vacation around her needs.
I completely agree.
I mean, good one. OP really took advantage of the time change to work in his favor. But, 2am really is not an early curfew. I think his dad was being very fair and very generous.
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