With only a few days into daylight saving time, I feel like we are sitting down to dinner for our own “early bird special.” It’s still light outside when we start figuring out our evening meal. I feel like just making a few sandwiches instead of a meal and calling it a second lunch. Thankfully, it’s not too significant an adjustment. What is one thing we are as humans? We are adaptable.

Since time is a human-made concept, it’s no surprise that there is confusion around it.

As we know, the United States uses the 12-hour clock and refers to the 24-hour clock usually as military time. Other countries, mostly non-English speaking countries, use the 24-hour clock for writing, scheduling and for telling time. (There are always exceptions with people speaking in 12-hour time while using the 24-hour clock for work.) Please don’t come at me with exceptions. I ate dinner at 4 p.m.

For those not familiar with the different types of time, military time clocks the day with all 24-hour increments starting with 0000 (zero hundred) and continuing numerically until the end of the day at 2400 (twenty-four hundred). Again, there may be controversy over whether the day starts with 0001, but I’m going by what my military father taught me.

The historical origin of a 12-hour clock dates back to Egyptian or Babylonian times, when the passage of time was visual, divided into daylight and evening hours. The persistent use of a 12-hour clock in the United States and other former colonies is inherited from Britain, which adopted that timing standard in the 18th century. Early watches and clocks were designed with a 12-count numerical dial, further cementing the 12-hour ritual.

Morning and evening hours were determined by a.m. (ante meridiem), Latin for “before midday,” and p.m. (post meridiem), meaning after “midday.” The terms came into use as people used the sun to determine time.

According to Merriam-Webster, the first recorded use of ante meridiem was in 1563. When the sun reached its zenith (full height), people documented activities as either before or after midday. Using noon as the starting point, midnight is considered the halfway point or mid-point between day and night. Even though midnight technically marks the start of a new day, it is really the middle of the night.

For me, I’ll snack until it’s dark o’clock and a reasonable dinner time. The bright light shining on all this a.m. and p.m. madness is that it’s almost spring!