My alarm clock is about 12 years old. Of all my stuff, it has to be the oldest. It has a nine minute snooze button, but I can hour-snooze with a dexterous flick of a thumb. It has a conveniently placed volume knob. Its got am, fm, AND tape. I could wake up to any of those media, yet I still choose to wake up to that old standard. A sound so horrible, it had to have been engineered by satan.
I wake up every moring to the furious pulses of my alarm clock. Gee gosh, that sound is irritating. Seriously, worst sound ever. It represents years of deep-seeded psychosomatic torture. I hear that sound and immediately, a full body shudder tears through me. Fear, horror, dismay, panic...ugh. There is no pavlovian response stronger than this.
Waking up is the worst part of my day. And its too bad it has to happen every day. I remember when going to sleep used to be the enemy. I remember absolutely refusing to go to sleep. Now waking up is far, far worse. When did this paradigm shift occur? My best estimate is about 12 years ago.
