Celebrating 200 Years
HUMOR

What it’s like being the only person alive who still uses a real alarm clock

There are approximately eight billion people on Earth, and I am fairly confident that I’m the only one under the age of 40 who still sets a physical alarm clock every night. I know this because everytime someone sees it lying on my desk, they react as though I’ve just showed them a dinosaur fossil.

Keep reading to find out what happens when you willingly choose to live like it’s still 1825.

The background

To be fair, I tried to fit in. I used my real, physical alarm clock everyday in highschool, but I left it behind moving into college because I didn’t want my roommate to think I was some geek who spent my free time chasing radio waves. So, I thought, why not just use my phone alarm like every other college student these days?

It all started during my second week EVER of college, when I set my phone alarm to go off in the morning so that I could get to my 8 a.m. chemistry lab. Predictably, my $1,000 Apple iPhone failed me and decided that 7 a.m. was the absolute peak time to update its software, and I woke up in a cold sweat 40 minutes later.

If you study within the science department here at Miami University, you know that if you miss as much as five minutes of a lab, you might as well just drop out to save yourself some paperwork. So, a few days later, I did what any other college student would do in this situation: I called home, forced my parents to solve my problem for me, and had them mail my alarm clock straight to campus. 

That was the day I turned 72 years old.

The shock value

When new friends visit my dorm for the first time they look at my alarm clock as if it should be displayed next to a typewriter in a national museum. They look at my nightstand, then back at me, then back at my nightstand again. 

Friend 1: “Oh my heavens. Is that… is that plugged into the wall?”

Friend 2: “I didn’t even know they still made these things. So how do you snooze it?”

Me: “I reach over and click the giant red button that says snooze.”

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Friend 1: “Woooowwww. And then what happens?!”

Me: “It stops.”

Friend 2: “Fascinating.”

Sometimes they’ll ask for a picture, but I usually deny their request. One time the flash was too harsh on my plastic box, and it blew a fuse.

My nightly ritual

Phone-alarm users will never understand that setting a physical alarm clock is a violent sport to play every night. I can’t just swipe a smooth toggled bar across a screen. I have to set my alarm for a different time each morning, so I sit on the edge of my bed and repeatedly slam a button down fifty times before I go to sleep.

If I miss my target time by one click? Wonderful. I’ll have to cycle all the way through a full twenty four hours just to get back to the correct time.

Then comes the volume test. To ensure the speaker hasn’t rusted shut, I have to double check the audio. So, I switch it on. Every. Single. Night. This triggers a deafening burst of awful music, followed by a pillow being chucked at my head because my roommate is trying to settle down for the night. Yeah, nice try Brooklyn, but there’s no sleeping in this house until my alarm is successfully armed.

Reality

The biggest downside is that I don’t get to wake up to the sound of ocean waves or soft, gentle humming. My options are strictly limited to redneck country or the somber voices of newscasters discussing the latest deals on lawn mowers.

Honestly, I don’t mind it. My alarm clock has never needed an iOS update. It has never run out of battery. It has never randomly decided to let me sleep in. It simply rests on my desk, patiently waiting to ruin my morning.

I guess the old folks were right. Technology that predates the moon landing actually is still useful. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way to buy an Atari console and landline.

rappcr2@miamioh.edu

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