By Chet Clem
Humor Columnist

“Apparently the whole civilized world has conspired to participate in a monumental imbecility,” wrote Marvin Chester in October 2000. It may have been the only time that fall that the word ‘imbecility’ was used outside the context of the presidential race.

No, Marvin wasn’t writing about politics, he was referring to Daylight Savings Time and how stupid it is. And he should know; he’s a physics professor at UCLA. Plus, his name is Chester, so we can just assume he’s an authority.

As far as I can tell, Marvin is right. Daylight Savings Time doesn’t make sense. It just means that once every spring I wake up an hour later than I planned. That is, assuming you follow the guidelines of the American Association of Medical Professionals, which define waking up as “getting out of bed and exerting yourself in a manner other than yawning and scratching.”

That said, I felt that this week it was my responsibility as a humor columnist to look into why we observe this ritual each year. Well, that and I have a lot of other work I should be doing. Work that each year does not make way for such important intellectual endeavors as March Madness, which of course is now in April. But then again, so is snow.

For some reason I’ve always assumed that Daylight Savings was invented to help farmers. I’m not a farmer, but luckily my friend Liz McNamara ’05 is. Having grown up on the McNamara Dairy Farm in Plainfield, NH makes her an agricultural expert in my mind. Says McNamara, “Hell, I don’t even understand Daylight Savings, but I guess I could see where people would think that it was for agriculture. All it does is make me work more hours in the damn day.” I think it’s safe to say we’ve proved the farming theory wrong.
To find out the truth I turned to the historical expert, namely Google. As it turns out, the concept was first invented by Benjamin Franklin who first published it in the French Journal de Paris on April 26, 1784. Franklin wrote the piece as a joke, parodying himself and his desire to play chess into the wee hours of the morning and sleep until noon. Who knew Ben and I had so much in common? Well, except that I don’t play chess.

Franklin wrote about preserving candles, which I think we can all agree is important. I’m sure there’s a vigil somewhere on campus that needs them.

Although initially intended as nothing more than a joke, Franklin’s idea was adapted and put into use in the United States as an energy saving device during World War I and World War II. Finally, in 1966 Congress made the policy official. You can tell it’s official because no one understands it and it results in problems for everyone.

The most common annoyance is having to turn all the clocks forward an hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall. This year I’ve given up. I’m going to let my VCR blink 11:00 until October.

The switch in the fall is always easier for me to remember. It usually comes right around the time that the Red Sox blow it again and all of New England is too depressed to care about time change. In fact, let’s just go ahead and blame the end of last season on Daylight Savings. Clearly Grady Little just forgot to change his watch back and left Pedro Martinez in for an hour too long.

Always a sucker for surveys, I went to the experts at Maxwell House Coffee to see what they had to say about the recent switch. “Ninety-one percent of Americans feel cheated, tired and disoriented because they’ve lost that hour of sleep. Half surveyed said that they hate making the switch.” In fact, the switch poses an actual danger. Statistics show that there is an 8% rise in auto accidents in the five days after we lose an hour of sleep.

It’s easy to see the switch as a bad thing, but let’s not forget to look at the positives too. The Europeans have a much better spin on the idea; they refer to it as the start of the “summertime period.” It means we have more hours of daylight to enjoy. Well, except for these next two weeks. But Short Term is in sight, and I know I’ll appreciate the extra hour of sunlight then. I’m not Catholic, but I’ll be giving up sobriety for 40 days and 40 nights.



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