the .: fyr :. light

For most of my life, the concept of daylight saving time has been an archaic concept. One which “modern thinkers” realize is a complete and utter waste of time. Jamaica did away with “spring forward, fall back”, as I remember it, because “children had to go to school in the dark”. I was young, but I remember that this decision came soon after a young high school aged young woman was raped and killed and thrown into a gully on her way to school one dark DST morning. I remember the outrage and the fear because I, myself, was near in age to this young woman and would soon be walking my way to school in the mornings.

Soon after that, the then government declared daylight saving time gone. That was October of 1983. Jamaica has been on Standard time ever since.

There has been talk of re-introducing the spring-forward,fall-back time change for energy conservation reasons. As recently as August 2009, one of the Jamaica Gleaner’s contributors wrote about the need to re-visit the idea and the argument is that the rest of the world saves from 1% to 3 1/2% on energy costs every year when they spring-forward. It’s a compelling argument because 1% of billions of dollars is a pretty large sum.

Of course, I have to ask myself just how much energy is saved by reducing nighttime electricity usage when you have to use it in the mornings. But … that could be just me. Then again, it seems other people are asking the same question.

On a personal level, spring-forward for me means later sunrises and the whole freaky deal of it being still sunlit at 8pm at night. That plays havoc with my internal clock because it has been used to a standard sunrise and sunset for over 20 years. This morning, I got awake and my body said it was after 7. My husband apparently had the same feeling because he stumbled out of bed thinking he was late for work (you heard me, work on a Sunday – poor guy). In actuality, because we had fallen-back at midnight (or was it 1am), he still had an hour left to sleep – and he went happily back to sleep with a smile on his face.

Me? I got up. I’ve been up since. And it feels odd that it is as light outside as it is, this “early”. My poor internal clock will be confused for the rest of the week.

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