You know, I’m not really a big fan of the whole Daylight Savings Time concept…
Firstly, it’s just confusing. I don’t get why we need to save the daylight at all, not to mention all the clock confusion. It used to be fairly simple, I’m guessing, when all the clocks had hands. But in our digital/computer/cell phone age, things get a little hazy. Some technology automatically updates itself, some asks your permission to update and some doesn’t bother at all.
For example, I like to use my cell phone as my alarm, but since I couldn’t guarantee if it would change itself over or when it would choose to do it, I couldn’t risk it. Thus, I was stuck using an alarm clock, but even a basic clock isn’t completely to be trusted. We had some friends who dutifully set their clocks back one hour, not knowing that the clocks automatically corrected for Daylight Savings. Needless to say, they got up REALLY early the next morning.
With all the clock confusion, the day after a time change is riddled with chaos. One clock says one thing and one clock says another and instead of being able to casually glance at the time, you have to go through a whole mental checklist to determine if you are looking at a clock that you had changed, one you hadn’t gotten around to yet, or one that changes itself.
Besides all that, Daylight Savings is discriminatory. It’s a plan that is purported to be beneficial to all, with no consideration of parents of small children. Little kids have internal clocks that cannot be set forward or back. So while the rest of society is doing little happy dances because they get to sleep an extra hour, all the moms and dads out there are groaning in agony, knowing that 6:00 am is the new 7:00 am.
My kids already enjoy waking up at the crack of dawn. So we have a loose rule that they’re not supposed to come out of their rooms until the sun is “awake.” Which has been keeping them in bed until about 7:20 am. Unfortunately, not only are children’s internal clocks unable to be set back an hour, but no one sends the sun a memo about Daylight Savings Time either. So the morning after the time change, the sun “wakes” up the same time as it did the day before. But now that is 6:20 am. Ugh.
So those are my complaints with Daylight Savings Time. I’d take them up with the guy that originally came up with the idea, but I’m pretty sure it was Ben Franklin and he’s kind of unavailable. Plus, he made some impressive discoveries regarding electricity, and I’m a huge fan of electricity, so I’ll cut him some slack.
