Every year at this time of year, I’m reminded of how much I hate the switch back to “standard time.” That might make sense in the rest of the country, but I live in Florida, and things are different here.
I’ve always thought that we here in Florida should be on a Daylight Saving Time/Standard Time schedule exactly the opposite of the rest of the country. We should have DST during the winter months, and ST during the summer.
All summer, the hot sun is blazing away until late into the evening, causing us to hide indoors and run our air conditioners. If we were on Standard Time during those hot months, it would cool off — at least tiny bit — an hour earlier in the evening, and we might have some time in the late afternoon when it would be pleasant to be outdoors.
All winter, when we have wonderful weather and want to be out of doors as much as possible, the sun sets early and it’s full dark by 6pm. Most people have little or no daylight time after work to spend outdoors. It gets dark too early.
My husband and I went sailing in our kayaks yesterday. We hauled the kayaks down to Pine Island Marina and sailed fro there out to our friend’s fish shack, one of those old-timey fishing huts on pilings out in Pine Island Sound. It was a beautiful day — sunny, but not too hot, and just a delight to be outside, especially on the water. That’s the kind of weather we have from October through March. But with a 2 1/2 hour sail from the fish shack back to the marina, we had to leave by 3:30 to make sure we got back before dark. Since going back to standard time last night, we’ll have to leave by 2:30 for that same trip.
When told the reason for Daylight Saving time, the old Indian said “Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of the blanket and have a longer blanket.”
