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The epic story of my alarm clock
Saturday - January 28, 2006
The time was
approximately 10 A.M. on a winter morning in 1996. I slowly sat
up in my college dorm bed, wiping the sleep from my
eyes.
"Wait a minute, I'm awake on my own." I
realized. "And it's sunny outside."
That was bad news. I glanced over at my
alarm clock, a phone/radio/alarm clock combo that had long lost
its phone handset; a clock that I'd had since I was 10 years
old; a clock that was supposed to wake me about 6:30 that
morning so that I could get to my 8 A.M. final exam; a clock
that now read 10-something A.M.; a clock that still had the
alarm light dot illuminated, indicating that the alarm was in
fact set to go off. This is the story of a life-long hate-love
relationship with that appliance.
Long
Relationships
Here's a
brief glimpse of other
things in my life that have
endured for years.
Animate Things:
Family: 30 years
Buffy: 14 years
Best Friends: 10
years
HS sweatheart: 4
years
Pet goldfish: 3
years
Inanimate Things:
Clock Radio: 20
years
TV & VCR: 13
years
Cellphone #: 7
years
Ex-girlfriend Jill: 11
months
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I was probably happy to get the damn
thing some birthday or Christmas long ago. It was a grown up
thing - I didn't need mom to wake me for school anymore and I
could now have privacy when calling... whomever. The clock was
the standard brown plastic type thing, like any other clock,
and had a phone and radio ingeniously integrated into it. If
that wasn't pushing the technological envelope, surely this was
- the radio and alarm muted whenever the handset was picked up
to make or answer a call.
This technological feat was accomplished
via a second button next to the phone's own hang-up button, so
that, when the receiver was hung up, both buttons would be
pressed and the connection to the radio's speaker would be
reestablished. Pure genius!
But wait, there's more! The clock also
had two programmable alarms! I usually set them to go off 10
minutes apart so that I could snooze in between. I used to keep
the thing across the room so that I had to get out of bed to
shut it off. If I could reach it from bed, it was useless - I
wouldn't get up.
After my professor had kindly allowed me
to take my exam late, I arrived back at my dorm. We were alone
now, me and it. There'd be no one to hear it scream (and if
anyone did, they'd just assume it was an alarm clock going
off). I interrogated the device to find out what times my
alarms were set. I figured I'd made the o-so-typical AM/PM
mistake. Nah. I knew this clock too well. I knew it so well
that I could reset my alarms in my sleep; and sometimes did.
But not this time.
I examined the receiver cradle where,
absent a handset, scotch tape had been used to hold down the
magic button so that the radio and alarm wouldn't mute. The
tape was still there; it had been for years.
My parents had unplugged and taken away
the phone receiver when I was a teenager. I had gotten myself
grounded, which meant no TV or phone. The next morning I awoke
late for school. My alarm had not gone off. As I would again
years later, I examined the damn thing. I pressed the magic
button and, viola! It worked. I got some scotch tape and used
it to hold the button down.
For some reason, the handset never
returned and it was eventually replaced by a standalone phone
while the empty cradle of my clock gathered dust.
After many years, the dust had covered
over the scotch tape, making it barely visible. But upon
inspection, I noticed it and remembered its purpose. I pressed
down on the tape lightly, reestablishing the alarm/radio
connection to the crappy little speaker. Suddenly, my dorm room
filled with what had become, over the years, the most ungodly
sound I'd ever known, the sound that had awoken me every
morning for years. It had failed to ring that morning because
the tape had lifted just enough to allow the button
up.
Fast-forward to seven years later. It
was the first day of spring classes of my second year teaching
part-time at a local community college. I woke on my own, late;
fortunately not too late. My clock had failed. In the years
that had passed, a golf tee had come to replace the scotch
tape. It was probably the first thing I could find that I could
use to wedge the button down - likely following another morning
where the tape had once again failed. By that point in its life
the faceplate of the radio dial had long since come off, making
it impossible to see what station it was set to.
It didn't matter; the alarm clock is all
I'd used it for for years - most of my life at that point. I
hated how it looked, despised how it sounded and how it woke me
from many a wonderful dream. But somehow it stuck around. It
had become the oldest possession in my life, and likely the
only one I'd used nearly every single day. If the clock had
been able to see through those ugly green LED numerals or hear
through that tinny speaker, it would have been privy to all the
ups and downs of my life since I was a child. It woke me for
school, and later, for my first job. It woke me for my SATs.
Its glow had been the room's only illumination when I lost my
virginity. It showed me how many hours I'd been trying to win
back a girlfriend who had just dumped me. It reminded me how
late it was when I staggered in from a college party. It woke
me early on many a Saturday morning when I had forgotten to
turn its alarm off. It flashed 12:00 thousands of times
following power failures. It woke me from naps in college and
after. It was my most common excuse for arriving late
somewhere.
But it's merely a clock. An ugly, noisy,
broken clock. But it's my clock, and I know it
well.
So why was I late to teach class that
morning? Had it failed again? Nope, it was my fault. After all
these years, I was still capable of making the AM/PM mistake.
Damn clock.
Posted at 04:05 PM < Just Another Brick in the Blog
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