The United States Senate unanimously voted to make Daylight Savings Time permanent, driving the first stake through the heart of the annual falling back and springing ahead ritual Americans apparently hate more than homelessness, climate change, illegal immigration, high gas prices or any other of the thousands of issues we endlessly fight over.

If the House follows suit, and President Biden signs the “Sunshine Protection Act” into law, 2022 will be the last year we have to drag out the step ladder to reset that clock over the kitchen sink or fish through the junk drawer to find the microwave oven owner’s manual.

Our two political parties have finally found something everyone can agree on: we hate setting clocks!

Yep, that was Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders singing Kumbaya on C-Span while Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer patted each other on the back rather than stab each other. Miracles do happen.

Each year The Wife and I go through the same irritating spring/fall ritual along with the rest of you; I change the analogue clocks requiring ladders or long arms while The Wife resets the digital clocks that require intelligence. I actually sold a car because I had to take it to the dealership to set the clock.

This year, I inventoried time in my house, both the number of clocks and watches we own and how much time we waste moving the big hand and little hand back and forth. I tallied 26 clocks in the house, with three more in my 120-square-foot backyard office and the two in our cars. That’s 31 places I can find out what time it is and yet I’m still late whenever I go anywhere.

However, I have noticed a subtle lightening of my burden.

More and more clocks are now WiFi based, meaning they change automatically, including our cellphones, the clocks in the cars and the cable box, the printer/FAX machine clock and the Seiko satellite timepiece I keep in my office but rarely look at because it’s up high and I’ve got this neck thing. In a few more years all clocks will set themselves and our biannual tradition will become as quaint as Maypole dances or great-grandma’s doilies.

Frankly, if Congress just waits a bit longer, this will be a self-correcting problem without them doing anything, which is pretty much what we’ve come to expect from Congress.

Still, while it’s easy to mock Washington for picking the lowest possible hanging legislative fruit to act upon, given the current dysfunction in American politics, even this no-brainer is reason to celebrate.

Ben Franklin is often credited as the “Father of Daylight Savings”, but he was actually yanking the French’s chain in the 1790s when he suggested moving the clocks ahead to save on candles. Kiwi bug collector George Hudson was serious about daylight savings when he proposed the idea again in the 1890s, but it wasn’t until fuel shortages during World War I and again in World War II the idea started to take root, becoming official American policy in 1966.

But all that was pre-digital.

with everyone staring at their phones, or asking Siri or Alexa what time it is, who needs to be on a ladder twice a year? Perpetual Daylight Savings Time’s time has come.

There are obvious downsides to ending the biannual clock swap: kids in northern states will stand in total darkness waiting for the school bus, while I’ll have to stay up until 8 o’clock waiting for the sun to set. What comes on after “Jeopardy!?”

Of course, being the greedy species we are, I fully expect a year or so from now someone will start pushing for yet another hour of sunshine, then another and another until, pretty soon night itself has been outlawed.

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When I was nineteen, I had a summer job cutting lawns and hedges. Nearly every day I wished it was Labor Day so I could go back to school and booze it up and goof around with my buddies. Finally, after two months of listening to my bellyaching, Chick Dumas, a sixty-year-old lifer, looked at me and said, “Kid, you’re wishing your life away.”

How right he was. It’s one of life’s eternal ironies, the people with the most time are the people in the biggest hurry.

You rarely hear about a 60-year-old getting busted for drag racing in Valley. The closer we get to the finish line the more likely we are to slow things down, to value time over pretty much everything else. As we age God grants us patience.

Or should that be “patients” given how much time we kill in doctor’s waiting rooms?

No more springing ahead, even better, no more falling off a ladder.

Doug McIntyre can be reached at: [email protected].