The recent change of our clocks back to Standard Time got me to thinking about the madness through which most of us suffer twice each year. Those dreaded words: "Daylight Saving Time." Before I get into this, let me get one thing straight. It's a bit of a peeve that this officer on the Spelling and Grammar Police force has suffered through more times than he can shake a stick at. And he shakes a mean stick.
So many people refer to this clock-altering scheme as "Daylight Savings Time." The "saving" is not plural. We are [allegedly] saving daylight, thus the singular form of the word. And here's a little info from Wikipedia to back me up:
Daylight Savings Time is a misspelling, but more common than the correct term. Setting our clocks one hour forward in the spring is often referred to as “Daylight Savings Time” even though “Daylight Saving Time” is the correct spelling.
There. Got that off my chest, along with some of the hair. Ouch.
Aside from the cringe I get from the mispronunciation and misname of this misappropriation of our precious time, I'm annoyed by what it achieves—or doesn't achieve. That's what inspired this post. Feel free to agree or not.
You have to wonder how moving the time around would give us an "extra hour" of daylight. It makes no sense. Having the sun set an hour later means that we'll have an extra hour of daylight [*wink*] in the evening, but that extra hour [*wink*] comes at a price—the loss of an hour of light in the morning. Back in the early '70s during the first energy crisis, Congress extended Daylight Saving Time (DST) to year round to save even more energy. That meant that in the wintertime, when the days are shorter anyway, we'd get an extra hour [*wink*] in the evening, but at the loss of that light in the morning. I recall going to school (eighth grade) literally at night. Not only did we have to get dressed with all of our lights on (saving energy, huh?), but our parents had to drive us to school in the dark. The school had to turn on their outdoor lights for us as well. In my mind, I get to tell people that I went to night school when I was 13. And it's not a lie!
Two of the states in our country don't observe DST. Arizona and Hawai'i kicked the idea to the curb a long time ago. And good for them for doing so!
Here in Southern California, where traffic tends to rule our lives, there's a noticeable phenomenon that occurs with each change of the clock—either forward and backward. We drivers tend to get set in our ways, and when something changes, like amount of daylight, it throws us off. I've noticed an increase of (fortunately) minor accidents in my daily commute in the first few days of the "new" time. Fortunately, I continue to be spared from that. Knock on wood.
I fail to see how this entire idea saves energy. As I said above, when you have to turn on lights when you used to NOT have to, you're NOT saving energy. It's really about as simple as that. Sure, with DST you might get an "extra hour" to enjoy a barbeque or a swim party, but you'll burn up those savings every morning unless you want to get dressed in the dark.
Every time we have to move our clocks, people talk about eliminating the whole idea. Strange as it sounds, a state cannot simply change its time-changing policy and *POOF* it's done. Any such move must be approved by Congress—yes, THAT Congress. And you know how long that can take. It's going to take quite a lot of time and effort to put an end to the clock-changing madness, so the likelihood is fairly small that this will happen within our lifetime. Diana's lifetime, maybe. But we can only hope.
