I’ve never really been a fan of Daylight Savings Time. When we &uot;spring ahead,&uot; we lose an hour of sleep. Because I get up around 4:30 a.m., I much prefer gaining an hour by &uot;falling back.&uot;

As a teen, one time I was spending a Saturday night at my cousin Jeff’s house, coincidentally on the night we were returning to Standard Time. We were staying up all night listening to the radio, and the announcer eventually said it was time to set the clocks back one hour, so we did. What was really weird was that an hour later, he said it again.

Even more weird is the concept of air travel during the time change. What happens if you cross a time zone at that moment? The people on the ground adjust their clocks, but what time is it in the plane? Does it take a really long time to fly east when springing ahead? When falling back and flying west, can you actually land at your destination before having left home?

I don’t believe we’ve used the concept of Daylight Savings Time to its full potential. If we can do this with an hour of the day, why not with a day of the week? Wouldn’t it be kind of cool to go to bed on a Tuesday night and wake up on Thursday morning, thereby eliminating one day from your work week? Of course, we’d have to make it up in the fall, to even things out. We could have a weekend with two Saturdays and one Sunday. Employers, though, would probably tend to prefer a one-day weekend in the spring and a six-day work week in the fall.

Even better would be to set the calendar back one month at the end of August, providing one more month of warm weather. Then we could bypass the entire month of February (and one-third of winter) by moving ahead another month at the end of January. It’s not like we’d be missing any real holidays, so who’d care? Nobody would have to miss their birthday, either. Anybody born from Feb. 1-14 could celebrate their birthday in January; those born from Feb. 15-28 could celebrate in March. The extra day added during Leap Year could either occur during a &uot;nonmonth,&uot; or alternatively add a 32nd day to January and March.

I bet a lot of people would be in favor of taking it one step further and applying this philosophy to years. For something of that scale, though, it would have to be individualized. It would be impossible for everyone to agree on when to add or subtract a year. No, for this, everybody would get to spring ahead or fall back one full year in age, at their whim. Consider what a great idea this is. How many 15-year-olds can’t wait until they turn 16, so they can get their driver’s license? At the other end of the spectrum, think about how many people somehow celebrate two consecutive 29th birthdays.

Because of the potential to abuse the system, however, there would have to be some way to govern how often everybody could increase or decrease their age. We couldn’t just let everybody arbitrarily add or subtract years, or there would suddenly be a whole bunch of ninth-graders who could legally drink alcohol, or adult criminals who would play the system, and then be tried as a juvenile. Fortunately, I have it all figured out. We would really only need four basic rules: 1. Nobody could alter their age by more than one year at a time (in either direction); 2. Nobody could alter their age more than once in any calendar year; 3. Nobody could &uot;spring ahead&uot; or &uot;fall back&uot; twice in a row &045; they would have to alternate between the two; and 4. Everybody would otherwise age at the normal rate.

Coincidentally, I had decided to write on this topic before I knew my column was moving from Mondays back to Tuesdays. Although I prefer &uot;falling back&uot; to &uot;springing ahead,&uot; I don’t really mind the move. At least it gives me an extra day every week to finish my column.

Dustin Petersen is an Albert Lea resident. His column appears Tuesdays.