I was on the road around 7:30 in the evening the other day and I noticed something. It was almost dark. It hadn’t yet turned into Fall and it was already dark before prime time television began. You do realize what that means. Don’t you? Yes, another time change is coming.
When I saw that the cars around me had their headlights on and it was only 7:30, I flashed on what it would be like only six short weeks from now. We go through this every fall. On the last Saturday of October we will turn our clocks back an hour, gaining an hour of sleep that night but losing many, many hours of sanity as the trade-off. That’s because you can’t be sane when it gets dark before the six o’clock news comes on. Or in the deepest throes of winter, before the five o’clock news comes on! The only good thing about this year will be that I won’t be leaving for work in the morning and coming home in the evening, both ways in darkness. Little consolation that will be only because I won’t be working. Instead I’ll get to sit at home and see how short the day really is as those few daylight hours march on. And march on they will, quickly, and too few of them, until March when we get to reset our clocks to DST (Daylight Saving Time or as I prefer Daylight Sanity Time).
This blog is loaded with posts on time changes. Why we change our clocks, why we change them back, who doesn’t go through this ritual, and other thoughtful answers for inquisitive minds. There are so many I can’t list them here. If you’re interested, type in Daylight Saving Time into the search box on the home page and pick a couple to review. I’ll give you a synopsis here. I don’t like it. I don’t like reverting to Standard Time every fall.
After the last Saturday of October there’ll be nothing fun left to do but wait for Daylight Saving Time to return. Ok, there will be Christmas. And New Years. And Thanksgiving. And Groundhog Day. Mustn’t forget Groundhog Day. But otherwise, the fun will be done until spring springs ahead into Daylight Saving Time and we recapture the evening sun.
That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?