When I was a kid, I loved when Daylight Savings Time arrived every Spring. In Pittsburgh, our winters were long, gray and dreary with no sun for weeks on end but plenty of snow, ice, salt and slush covering everything. And then, just when it seemed like winter would never end, sometime around Easter we’d move the clocks forward. It would still be daylight past 4 PM. The sun would even start to peek out in the early mornings and late afternoons when we weren’t trapped inside last school.
Daylight Savings Time was a welcome harbinger of spring.
After I moved to south Florida, Daylight Savings Time didn’t matter so much. The weather was always great obviously. Plus we didn’t have the extreme fluctuations in daylight that Pittsburgh had 1200 miles north of us so DST lost it’s special meaning to me for many years.
Around the time I hit age 40, I started noticing DST again. When we reset the clocks and “lost” an hour each spring, it would take me longer to adjust. Instead of being sleepy for a day, I’d feel lethargic and jet-lagged for a week. Each year, it gets a little worse.
So I was excited when I read that Senator Marco Rubio had written a bill to end DST that was co-sponsored by both democrats and republicans. That was years ago. And of course, there has never been vote on it.
I had hoped it might get passed when the Republicans controlled the senate – nope. I thought Rubio’s run for President might have pushed him to get it passed – nope.
So this week, as I begin my two week transition into shifting to DST, I was thinking we might never end DST.
Then it occurred to me how it still might happen. It won’t start from our infective and imbecilic Federal Congresspeople passing a law (god forbid). What will happen is some large, populous state like Florida, New York, California or Texas will pass a State Law ending it. Then, a few other states will follow suit. Then, over the next 5-10 years, at least half of the remaining states will end it.
And then, after most of the country is no longer observing DST, the Federal government will change the law.
It will happen just like the decriminalization/legalization of marijuana happened.
I just hope I live to see it. In the meantime, I’ll be going to bed and waking up a little earlier every day for two weeks a year and grumbling to myself about stupid congressmen, farmers and school kids.
