Spring Forward? Fall Back?...How's About We Meet In the Middle?

The old saying is “the only things that are certain…death and taxes”.

And in both cases, something gets taken away from us.

There’s a third thing that belongs on that list, though.

One hour. Every year at this time (pun inadvertent).
Spring forward. Fall back.

By the way, is it just me or do you also find a little frightening the number of people who cant seem to remember which way the clocks go on the respective days?
These are, I fear, the same people who are also authorized to drive their cars at 80 miles an hour right along side you and me.

The masses inability to grasp one of only two choices aside, I annually find myself not happy about the time change.

I’ve debated the issue with people through the years.

A lot of folks come down on the side of enjoying having “longer” days.
Look. I’m as much about sunshine as the next Vitamin D deficient earthling, but I like my yins and yangs to balance out.

In other words, I enjoy a fine nighttime just as much a fine daytime.

And I just can’t get overly enthusiastic about the sun radiating its bountiful light across the cornfields and through my bedroom window at 9:30PM.

Which is exactly what happens if you live on the East Coast.

Do we really rinse off the mower and fire up the grill two and a half hours before midnight?

The only real practical advantage to the longer day is the same as its been for decades.
It gives farmers more daylight to work the fields.

Fair point. Except I live in a rural area, I have yet to see a single horse and farmer steered plow and I’ve noticed that the tractors, combines, etc that wander around the fields in this neck of the woods all seem to be equipped with these new fangled things they call…uh…what is it?

Oh. Yeah.
Headlights.

And the “argument” that more daylight hours cut down on the consumption of energy has been pretty much proven to be crap.

This is America, dammit. We don’t believe in cutting down on the consumption of energy.
Why do you think they keep calling us the American consumer?

And I wont even waste my time (pun intended that time) getting into the whole thing about the various counties and/or states in the Union who don’t even bother to pay attention to the time change.
The sign says “Welcome To Arizona…Don’t Touch That Hour Hand”.

So, for my money, Daylight Savings Time belongs with the Electoral College on the list of things that serve no useful purpose, tend to screw things up and simply haven’t gotten around to being changed.

In lieu of that, though, and in full recognition of the fact that DST will be with us for a long time to come, I have a “sub-peeve” about the whole thing.

Why can’t we, at least, be rewarded, rather than penalized?
What do I mean, you ask?
Thanks for asking.

I mean that no matter which side of the pro/con debate you land on, I feel pretty sure I could convince you that the methodology employed, in a word, sucks.

Because what happens is that we are being robbed of 1/48th of our weekend.

And we don’t gain squat when we “fall back “(that means move the clocks back one hour for those of you racing down the highway at 80 miles an hour).
We simply get “back” the hour they took away from us in the spring. (when we move the clocks…oh, forget about it, you either get it or you’re never on time…)

Here’s what I think would be, at least, fair and, at best, pretty cool.

And would go a long way toward shutting up the naysayers.
Like me.

Take away the hour during the week.

Say, the first Friday in March, we spring forward by setting our clocks ahead one hour at 4:00PM.
Bang. Zoom. Just like that we get to home from work an hour early.
Cool.

And, of course, then we’re also getting to start our weekend an hour early.
Way cool.

Then, come November, we fall back by setting the clocks back one hour at the old traditional time of 2AM Sunday.
Zoom. Bang. Just like that we get an extra hour of weekend.
Cool.

And, of course, then we’re also getting to delay the start of the workweek by an hour.
Way cool.

In the same year, we get one hour lopped off our workweek and we get an hour added to our weekend.

Makes it almost seem like we’re getting two hours for the price of one, doesn’t it? What’s not to love about that?

Even I would stop bitching about Daylight Savings Time.

Well, after I left the office at 4PM on that March Friday and headed to Wal-Mart for the black out curtains so I could go to sleep before ten o’clock at night.

Come to think of it, that’s a waste of money.
Wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.

Damn tractors with their headlights on roaring around the fields at all hours of the night.