Michelle Kaplan

Spring Forward, Fall Back…Just Let Me Sleep, OK?

Has everyone recovered from our yearly moving of the clock? It seems to me that most people are okay after a day or two…for me, it takes about a month. I see it as jetlag, without the fun travel part, and I don’t like it. Maybe I should move to a state that does not practice the art of confusion or as most call it, Daylight Savings Time.

It has to be the only thing I don’t like about Spring.

Can someone explain why we still do this? Twice a year it’s like a big joke that the government plays on us. Let’s move the clocks. What lunatic invented this? I’ve heard the reasoning behind it:

To make better use of daylight:
An extra hour of daylight in the evening for people who drove a horse and buggy and washed their clothes down by the river was probably great, making them more productive. However, we’ve had so many advances since then, like a little thing called ELECTRICITY which kinda makes that a moot point.

Saves Energy:
Yes, it’s true and there are studies to back it up. That extra hour of daylight keeps us from flipping on the light switch for a little while. BUT, if we really want to significantly conserve energy, it would make more sense to phase out the incandescent light bulbs and have us all switch over to those funky compact fluorescent ones Al Gore is all hopped up about. According to Mr. Gore’s movie website, An Inconvenient Truth, http://www.climatecrisis.net/:

“CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. If every family in the U.S. made the switch, we’d reduce carbon dioxide by more than 90 billion pounds!”

However, according to the California Energy Commission’s website:
“Studies done in the 1970s by the U.S. Department of Transportation show that we trim the entire country’s electricity usage by about one percent EACH DAY with Daylight Saving Time.”
I guess they know how effective these savings are since they haven’t bothered to do another study in 30 years.

I’ve also perused online and read that the hour of extra daylight at night helps to prevent car accidents. I doubt that takes into consideration that because you’ve lost an hour of sleep, most likely you’re a little more tired, and therefore your reflexes may be a little slower to react when that tractor trailer driver, who never sleeps, jumps out in front of you.

They also probably didn’t consider other costs such as lost revenue due to missed appointments and getting into work late.

I guess we do it because it’s become a part of our culture. We’ve even adopted cute little sayings to help us remember which way to go and still, a lot of people don’t get it right.

Spring Forward: To remind us to move the clocks ahead one hour.
What?
I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly not going to be springing out of bed when my clock has been set an hour ahead before I went to bed the night before. Losing an hour of sleep to a mommy is like taking heroin away from an addict. A mommy can NEVER get enough sleep, especially the working mommy. It’s been a month – I’m still tired.

Fall Back: To remind us to move the clocks back one hour.

Yes, back to bed. If you’ve played the game you think you’re getting an extra hour of sleep, but really…who can take advantage of that? If you really want to get the hour of sleep you have to fool yourself into thinking that bedtime is an hour earlier. So, if you normally go to bed at 11, now it’s 10. Sounds good…just lie down and go to sleep. However, I can’t give up an hour of doing laundry, answering email, returning phone calls, paying bills to realize that dream.

So, stop the madness, let’s end Daylight Savings Time. Of course, there is a website of likeminded people who wish to do just that: http://www.standardtime.com/