Henrietta Hay's Column

Well, here we are back on Daylight Saving Time. I think the whole business of changing time twice a year is kind of silly, but it doesn't bother me very much. My friend the philosopher, however, claims that every bad thing that happens from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October is the fault of Daylight Saving Time. This includes weather, children hurting themselves, poor posture and bad sleeping habits. Since she is normally a very logical person, the only explanation I have is that some people have a deep mythical fear of messing around with the sun.

Daylight Saving Time did not originate with the Founding Fathers, but it has been confusing people for most of this century. It was in effect during both wars - One and Two, that is. In fact from 1942 to 1945 we had it year-round. It has been with us on a regular basis since 1967 when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act.

Since the conservation of fuel has not often been a matter of political importance, I can only assume that Congress felt that an extra hour of Daylight on a summer evening would add spice to the barbecue and an extra few points to the tennis game. What they forgot, being politicians whose roots were far behind them, was that cows can't tell time and neither can babies, that trying to get a seven year old to bed in full daylight requires a declaration of war and that even sensible adults sometimes find it hard to fall asleep at 10 o'clock when it's really only nine.

But Congress was adamant, and DST has been with us ever since, with a few exceptions. People in several states did not take kindly to the idea. Arizona said absolutely "No Way." I found out the reason the first time I visited there in August. When I opened the door of an air conditioned home one night at midnight expecting Colorado cool, I was hit by a blast of air so hot I was physically pushed back. An extra hour of sunshine in the afternoon is the last thing they want.

So why Daylight Saving Time? Or, for that matter, why Standard Time? Why not have one of them year-round? Why mess around with Mother Nature every April and every October? I wish I knew. It's the confusion that gets to people.

One answer that has been given in favor of DST is that it conserves gasoline and electricity by having more of people's "awake" hours in daylight. But history shows that the conservation of energy has not been and is not now a very important political issue. Another reason is that it decreases the rate of automobile accidents by allowing working people to get home in their cars before dark.

On a personal level, the argument is that it allows the working person who gets off at 5 and may have to commute for an hour or two a chance to mow the lawn. It gives kids longer to play outdoors after they have been dragged away from their Nintendo games. It gives more leisure time for golf and hiking and enjoying the mosquitoes. But we still have the babies and the cows to worry about, and they do not take kindly to having their schedules changed. And there is my friend the philosopher who needs something to blame things on. And we really don't like to have school kids waiting for the bus in the dark.

There's no way we could make everybody happy, but maybe we could split the difference. Maybe we could move the clocks up or back a half hour - or 17 minutes or 42 minutes and leave them there. It's the switching back and forth that seems to irritate people the most. Nearly everyone I know complains bitterly twice a year about the time change. They spend most of the summer learning when to go to sleep and when to wake up, and then have to learn it all over in November.

Guess I'll start a campaign for a uniform time system throughout the year. There's not a lot we can do about the changing seasons, but it might help us cope. Or maybe we have missed the point entirely and Gary Larson was right in his The Far Side cartoon, "Great moments in science: Einstein discovers that time is actually money."