By Forrest Bunkard | Beacon features columnist

“Spring forward, fall ahead.”

Did you remember to set your clocks ahead at 2 a.m. Sunday? Actually, it would have been at 3 a.m., but not until after the fact. And by then you’d know you already did it anyway.

Problem solved.

Daylight saving time, a twice-yearly practice of moving the hands of time in one direction or the other, depending on the season, observed in most parts of the world, except for many places in the United States and many places throughout the world, has changed a lot within the past 10 to 18 years.

These days, almost all of the “leg work” is done automatically — cell phones, cable-TV units, computers, tablets, et. al., make the change so you don’t have to worry about it. Like clockwork!

Did you get what I’m getting at there?

Yes, there are still “hangers-on” rooted in a pre-digital age, like stove clocks, microwave clocks, coffee-pot clocks, wristwatches, pocket watches, old-fashioned alarm clocks and stopwatches, things which we have to adjust manually.

“Stove clocks.” That always makes me laugh. It makes me think about a product I’d like to invent — or maybe a funny book title — “Stove Clock Stuffing.” But I digress.

Another aside: If you think I mistyped this twice-annual rite of passage above, and intended to write “daylight savings time,” with an “s,” you’d be wrong. It’s singular — daylight SAVING. No “s.” I know it’s commonly called “daylight savings” by almost everyone you and I know, but I believe in accuracy, first and foremost.

And if you believe in it, too, and want a reminder of what’s correct, I found an easy way to remember it, because I always used to forget, too, and it is thus:

It’s not a bank.

The modern idea of daylight saving was first proposed in 1895. Skip ahead to the 1970s, and it almost immediately solved the energy crisis, as did adoption of the metric system. Alas, it couldn’t prevent Jimmy Carter from losing the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan, who probably didn’t believe in messing with international time-keeping measures, because he was into astrology, although nobody realized that until much later.

It wasn’t always this way. If you wind back the clock, you’ll notice …

Read Forrest Bunkard’s full column, and other stories, in the Beacon’s print edition. Subscribe today!