Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

This weekend marks the start of Daylight Saving Time in the United States, that glorious period of eight months in which most of the country deludes itself into thinking that it's an hour later than it would be in the four months of Standard Time. (Which is a delusion in its own right; surely the time that's observed for two-thirds of the year is the "standard" and it's the other third that constitutes the exception.)

In any event, this is the weekend when everyone except Hawaiians, most Arizonans, Puerto Ricans, Virgin Islanders, American Samoans, Guamians and Northern Marianans run around the house, trying to remember how to reset the time on that strange digital clock with the quirky controls that they lost the instructions for years ago. But at least once they've figured out how to get the hands to turn, they know which way to turn them because of that simple ditty "spring forward, fall back". (Let's overlook the little detail that it's technically not spring for a couple more weeks; the general time of year is enough to keep it straight.)

Problem is, that doesn't work here in the sensible parts of the country where we haven't perfected time travel. You'd think we have it easy, leaving the clocks to accumulate more dust and not waking up with an hour's less sleep on Monday morning. But in fact, DST does affect us. Seems that if you're in the habit of recording cable or satellite TV shows, or streaming radio broadcasts from out-of-state, you're going to record the wrong show if you don't reset the timers on your recording device of choice. It's okay for network shows because they're coming via stations right there in your own city, but if you're used to getting up to watch that timeshifted late-night cable series, you'll awake to discover that you've recorded an hour of some guy trying to sell you a folding pocket juice blender on easy installments. And if you don't draw a little chart with pictures of a rotating globe and little numbers, you'll invariably end up resetting the timers the wrong way.

So I call upon the ingenuity of all who contribute to this forum: I need an easy-to-remember mnemonic that tells me whether I should change a timed recording event at three o'clock to two or to four, and I need it to work for me in March as well as in November without getting it all backwards. (Remember Danny Kaye in The Court Jester trying to remember if the pellet with the potion was in the chalice from the palace or the flagon with the dragon; that kind of memory aid is worse than none at all.)