“Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care…about time?”
-Chicago

One of my favorite days of the year is the last Sunday in October.  That’s when I get to turn our clocks back and I “gain” an extra hour of time. 

“What shall I do with my extra hour?” I ask myself each year.  Catch up on housework?  Go shopping?  Read?  Call a friend?  Sew?  Sleep late? 

All day long, I keep an eye on the clock, relishing the fact that it’s an hour earlier than my body tells me it is.  It always takes me a few days to adjust, but I don’t mind.  I love it when someone calls me, who’s forgotten about Daylight Saving Time.  I love telling them about that extra hour they have to spend any way they want.  I feel like I’ve just given them a gift.

Conversely, one of my least favorite days of the year is the last Sunday in March.  I hate “losing” that extra hour.  I feel as if I’ve been robbed.  It takes more than a few days to adjust.  It takes weeks. 

That’s also the day that gets so many people in trouble.  That’s the day when a lot of people show up an hour late and stare at the people who are already at the place they were meeting them with an expression of confusion.  “What are you all doing here already?” and “What did I miss?” is written all over their faces.

I would never plan my wedding to occur on the last Sunday in March, even if someone offered to pay for the whole thing.  I could just imagine a bridesmaid showing up late.  Or worse yet, the groom!  Now way.  It’s too risky.

Daylight Saving Time caused me to miss a class one spring semester, when I was in college.  Who in their right mind would volunteer to take an 8:00 Sunday morning tennis class?  A stay-at-home Mom, that’s who.  It’s not easy fitting “American Lit II” into the kids’ schedule.  Every Sunday that particular semester, I would race to the class and make it just as the instructor was stepping onto the court.  On the Sunday that our clocks went ahead, I arrived just as the instructor was stepping into his car.  I had to make up the class later that week.

I’m sure everyone has a Daylight Saving Time story to tell.  We’ve all either arrived an hour early or an hour late to some event.  We all have to bear with the inconvenience of changing all the clocks in the house and in the car.  Thank God computers and cell phones automatically adjust to the time change.  Even still, it’s a pain in the neck to hop on a chair in every room and hope you remembered all of the clocks.  We have to endure family members asking us, “Is that clock right?” for days.  On those two Sundays, my husband always complains that we have “too many clocks in the house.”  The rest of the year, he’s more than happy to have them.

I’ll tell you who else doesn’t like changing the clocks back and forth even more than we do: farmers.  They say that they have a hell of a time getting the animals to adjust.  Also, their profession requires that they rise with the dawn.  Their bodies are even more confused than ours are.

Bar owners aren’t too crazy about Daylight Saving Time, either.  Since the clocks officially go back or forward at 2:00 a.m., owners are often unsure if they should serve everyone another round, or round everyone up and throw them out. 

Maybe Daylight Saving Time is more trouble than it’s worth.  If everything really “evens out” in the end, and we “gain” the hour in the spring that we “lost” in the fall, what do we really have to show for it, except a little more daylight in the summer?  And who was the person who dreamed up this idea, anyway?

Benjamin Franklin, that’s who.  Back in 1784, when he was in Paris, he wrote a whimsical essay entitled, “An Economical Project,” in which he proclaimed the benefits of changing time.  He thought it would be an excellent way to conserve the oil people used in their lanterns.  He was also 78 years old, confined to his house, and fond of playing chess into the week hours of the morning, so thrifty Ben may have had an ulterior motive when he came up with the idea.  But the idea seemed like a good idea to many other people, too.

One of those people was a London builder named, William Willett (1857-1915).  He lamented the loss of “wasted daylight hours” in a pamphlet entitled, “The Waste of Daylight,” in which he proposed that clocks be changed.  He was met with a lot of opposition and spent a fortune in lobbying, trying to get an act passed.  The Royal Meteorological Society insisted that Greenwich Time still be used to measure tides.  The Office of Works began closing their parks at dusk.  Kew Gardens ignored the idea altogether.  The gun at the Castle in Edinburgh was being fired at 1:00 p.m. by “summer time,” while the ball on the top of the Nelson monument on Calton Hill was falling at 1:00 p.m. Greenwich Time.  You can imagine the chaos.

Some legally minded folks were worried about inheritance issues.  For instance, a twin could be considered a “firstborn,” by one clock and “the second in line” by another, depending on which clock they were using. 

With so many good arguments against Daylight Saving Time, it’s a wonder that the notion was put into use at all.  It took a war to do it.  World War I, to be exact.  In an effort to conserve valuable energy, countries began using it.  Germany was the first to start.  Many other European countries followed.  The United States began using it in 1918, but time changes were controlled locally, until 1966.  That’s when Congress got involved and got most of us on the same clock.

It’s true that Daylight Saving Time helps the world conserve its natural resources.  Some say that it keeps the crime rate down, too, since many crimes which might have been committed in the dark didn’t get a chance to happen. 

Statistics also show that fewer traffic accidents occur during the daylight hours.  So, the time change saves lives and keeps insurance rates lower.  On the other hand, one study showed that accident numbers increase on the Monday morning following the day we “lose” an hour of sleep. 

Whether you like Daylight Saving Time or not, we’re stuck with it.  Many people use the event wisely, by changingthe batteries in their smoke detectors.  Fastidious folks use the opportunity to change the box of baking soda in their refrigerators.

But if you’re really opposed to Daylight Saving Time, you can move to Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, most of the Eastern Time Zone portion of the state of Indiana, and the state of Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Indian Reservation, which observes the time change).  Those are the only places which do not observe Daylight Saving Time.