People & Places: Are we really saving time with DST?

Some of my earliest memories are of my family’s very first home — a two-bedroom apartment at the corner of Hot Springs and New Mexico Avenue in my hometown of Las Vegas, N.M.

One memory that persists — a memory my parents didn’t share with me — was waking up one morning to go to school, coming out the front door with my mom on my way to kindergarten and it being dark all around us.

Like I said, my parents never remembered that day but it always stuck with me. I found out later it was 1974, the year that the U.S.A. instituted Daylight Saving Time all year round, due to the energy crisis.

I was a big fan of Daylight Saving Time when I was young. Back then, the time change came in April and, yes, the family was kinda tired the rest of the week after time took the spring forward. (We memorized “fall back and spring forward” in elementary school, helped by our music teacher.)

I was always happy about it. Daylight Saving Time meant summer was right around the corner. It meant Little League baseball was gonna start soon. It meant we had extra time to ride our bikes around town, play pick up basketball and anything else we could think to do.

As I got older, my attitude towards Daylight Saving Time started to change. When I hit eighth grade, the time changes started to mess me up. School started earlier. I was getting less sleep. That week afterward hit pretty hard, but we’d usually bounce back by mid week.

By high school, it was affecting me like it affected my parents, uncles and aunts. When I got my first job at 16, the mid-week closing shifts at MickeyD’s really made the two weeks after the time change hurt. The promise of summer always kept me thinking forward and anticipating vacation.

It kind of stayed that way through college and a long time after. Then at Daylight Saving Time Sunday moved from April to March. I had a car with air conditioning. Summer started to be a hot, sweaty burden. We have what seemed to be months more of extra daylight. I was not a fan.

That’s where I find myself today. This year, when the Groundhog declared six more weeks of winter, I was happy. I knew it didn’t mean it would happen (we’re in New Mexico, after all, not Pennsylvania) but the idea of cool breezes was a nice one. The thought of those hot summer winds that feel like we live inside a hair dryer is not a nice thought.

But since we’re past it now, and will have the warm weather to deal with is coming whether we like it or not, I guess it’s interesting to think back and remember that first time I became aware that Daylight Saving Time was a thing.

There’s been talk that the Congress or the Legislature may adopt Daylight Saving Time permanently. I was very much against that when I first heard about it. Now, I just want the powers to be to decide on one or the other. I’d prefer standard time.

I mostly just want us to pick one and stick with it. I just want the lawmakers to make a decision one way or the other.

I mean, are we really saving time anyway or are we just wasting it with all the changing of the clocks?