This is the time of the year that we re-engage in a biannual dispute that raises ire and bile. It splits families into warring camps. Friends grow cold when they realize their dear associates hold a different view. Children repudiate parents. Nothing is solved, and nothing is changed.
Well, I'm here to help. Instead of arguing pointlessly about daylight saving time in March and November, let us resolve to argue pointlessly about it in February and October.
"What?" the pro-DST camp says. "No. That's wrong. It goes against the time-honored shifts in the rhythm of the year. Arguing in defense of the clock change in March is essential, because when the clock lurches forward and the day lengthens, the wisdom of the change becomes self-evident."
"Likewise, making the case in October for the shortening of the day is unwise, because there's nothing like the waning moments of a glorious sun-burnished evening in October. The case is best made in November, when the dull nullity of the month is upon us, and we can advocate for its daily hastening."
Perhaps, but wouldn't it be good to get it out of the way earlier, so we can get on to fruitless arguing about others things? And this shift has some historical precedent. Think back to when daylight saving time was first proposed by Ben Franklin, who said "It is better to save the day than to burn the night," and everyone nodded along because, well, it was Ben Franklin.
He also said "Hour wise, minute foolish," and "A quarter-hour unspent at noon is often squandered at midnight." And "Better to burp a minute than swallow an hour." Or something along those lines. Anyway, when he signed the DST law in his second presidential term, it was only after extensive congressional debate — in February. So we have history on our side.
"Nonsense," you say. "First of all, Ben was never president. Second, I can't find any of those quotes online. Third, we all know that the time for debating DST was set during the New Deal, so farmers could have enough time to argue about it in November, after the harvest was in. There's your historical precedent."
True. But nowadays with modern technology, tractors that practically drive themselves and genetically modified crops that mature quicker and practically uproot themselves and throw their stalks onto the thresher, much of the work is finished by mid-October, so the farmers have time to debate the issue down at the general store around the stove.
We can't be tied to the old agrarian rhythms as we once were. Why, we still let kids out of school for the summer because they used to be used as farm labor, and that's archaic, what with the widespread usage of robot children. We need new paradigms.
There are some who want a drastic end: Just abolish it. Not DST, of course, but the arguing about it.
I'm on the fence. I like a pointless debate that changes no minds and has no practical effect in the world, especially if I can tell myself that my side carried the day. But in a world with so much contention — people get into fistfights over the question of how much wood a woodchuck could chuck — perhaps we should just end the debate and let the spring-forward/fall-back cycle continue without comment.
Could be worse. Could be spring-sideways/fall-over, but I'll leave that for a column about the time I tried to do ballroom dancing.
