Why you can blame Congress for Daylight Saving Time
Americans turn their clocks back early Sunday; Chad Pergram explains why some lawmakers want to end DST completely
Daylight Saving Time is one of those things that nobody likes but nobody ever gets around to getting rid of, a lot like the Electoral College for some and holiday fruitcakes for most of us.
The shift to end Daylight Saving in the fall, or start it up again in the spring, disrupts everyone’s circadian rhythms, turns flight and train schedules into nightmares, and makes cows incredibly unhappy because they have one more or one less hour before getting milked.
Not to mention how dark it suddenly gets on the first Sunday in November when it’s still afternoon, which depresses the heck out of everybody.
So there’s really nothing positive you can say about Daylight Saving since it serves no discernible purpose.
HOW DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME AFFECTS HEALTH
Or is there?
A week ago, the fire alarms went off in our house at 3 in the morning, with blaring whoops, sirens, and a panicked male voice yelling “Evacuate! Evacuate!” that could be heard easily a block away.
My wife and I immediately woke up and started running all over the house, first trying to determine if there was a real fire, which there wasn’t, and then, which smoke alarm had triggered the false alarm.
It’s really hard to think straight at 3 in the morning with sirens, whoops and “Evacuate! Evacuate!” going off in your ears, and then worrying what the neighbors are thinking, because you can’t get the thing to turn off.
Finally, I found a blinking red light on one device, indicating that it was the primary cause. There was no fire; it was simply that the battery was nearing the end of its useful life.
So I took it down from the ceiling, no easy feat because I am totally useless when it comes to anything I do with my hands. Sure enough, no matter how many times I pushed the button, or tried to move the plastic piece that covered the battery, nothing worked.
Do what our friendly firefighter told us: associate the change in clock and calendar with the idea of changing out all of the batteries in all of your smoke and CO2 detectors.
The alarm kept whooping, clamoring, and yelling “Evacuate!”
So I did what any intelligent, educated, red-blooded American would do. I took the darned thing, grabbed my car keys, put it under the left front tire of my car, and ran over it.
What a satisfying experience, even more so because the offending smoke alarm was no match for the heft of my Honda Accord.
Triumphantly, I turned the car off, bent down, and brought the new silent and destroyed piece of plastic up the stairs back into the house where the alarm was still doing its caterwauling and yelling at my family.
Why? Because some electrician, in his wisdom, had connected wirelessly all of the smoke alarms, so even if you killed one, it had no effect on the others.
So I did what any intelligent, educated, red-blooded American would do under these circumstances—I called 911.
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Five minutes later, three of the largest firefighters I’ve ever seen arrived in my house, fanned out, and somehow, mercifully, ended the cacophony.
They asked what happened to the missing smoke alarm.
Sheepishly, I explained what I had done in the driveway.
Before they left, the firefighters explained to my wife that the best time of year to change the batteries of all smoke alarms and CO2 alarms is when Daylight Saving comes and goes, in the spring and the fall.
They advised us to associate those two hiccups in the calendar with swapping out all of the batteries in all of the alarms.
“I just have to ask you guys,” I said to our early morning guests. “How did you figure out that my wife is the sensible one and that you needed to tell her this and not me?”
One of the firefighters looked at me and said, “Because she’s the one who didn’t take the fire alarm into the driveway and run it over with a car.”
So there you have it, America. Finally, one good thing you can say about Daylight Saving, whether it’s springing forward or falling back.
Do what our friendly firefighter told us: associate the change in clock and calendar with the idea of changing out all of the batteries in all of your smoke and CO2 detectors.
And then you won’t have to take one into the driveway and run it over.
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Although, truth be told, I really enjoyed doing that.
Just please don’t tell my wife.
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