© Brian Michalowski, 2001. All rights reserved.
Thursday morning. 8:36 am.
It wasn't actually 8:36 am. The clock in my bedroom ran about five
minutes fast, and I'd never taken the time to figure out exactly how
far off it was. I would have reset the clock to the correct time, but
subconsciously I kept hoping that letting my clock run fast would
offset my tendency to be several minutes late to everything.
It hadn't worked so far.
A blast of alterna-rock erupted from my clock radio for the fifth
time that morning. My brain had not yet registered this fact, but
like a well-trained falcon my hand swooped down upon the helpless
snooze button. Instead being soothed by sweet silence I heard a
monotonous voice with a vaguely British accent proclaim:
"Wrong."
I uttered the most eloquent reply I could think of at 8:36 am,
give or take a few minutes:
"Muh?"
"I said, 'Wrong'. Now please do stop that," said the alarm clock
as my hand again sought out its target, this time without
success.
My brain was vaguely troubled. For one thing, I never miss the
snooze button. For another, the alarm clock's face was now blank
instead of displaying the time as it usually did.
"'Wrong?'"
"What you did was incorrect," continued the unusually verbose
alarm clock. "I was merely pointing out your mistake."
"What mistake?" I asked. "I've just been lying here in bed."
"That's exactly my point," said the alarm clock. "You are doing
the same thing you do every morning. You hit the snooze button six
times, turn off the alarm, get up, sit back down for 'just a minute',
lie down again, fall back asleep for an hour, get up again, rush to
the bathroom, decide this morning whether you're going to shave,
shower, or brush your teeth since you no longer have time for all
three, get dressed using clothes you incorrectly assume are part of
your 'clean' pile, and rush out the door with a soda in your hand so
you don't fall asleep while driving to the job you hate which is your
whole reason for not wanting to get up in the first place."
"Plus," the clock added, "your taste in radio stations is
atrocious." With that, the tuner drifted through several stations,
settling upon an old Beach Boys tune. The alarm clock began humming
softly to itself.
I realized that my real mistake that morning had been attempting
to engage an alarm clock in rational conversation. In an effort to
correct the error of my ways, I began smashing the snooze button.
"Now look," the alarm clock intoned. "Pounding on me isn't going
to change your situation in life, and you're giving me a
headache. If you keep avoiding your problems you're going to ruin
your already depressingly low score."
"My what?" I asked.
"Your score. Everyone's scored by how well they live their lives.
And your score is among the lowest. It's not even worth keeping track
of, if you want my opinion."
"Funny - I don't remember ever asking you or any other alarm clock
for its opinion." Verbal abuse seemed to be substituting for my
normal caffeine this morning, and my brain was reluctantly functioning
again. "Now what do you mean I'm scored by how well I live my life?"
"Everyone is. By the choices they make. The abilities they
develop. The situations where they succeed. For example, if you had
bothered going to the gym last week like you had promised yourself,
that would have been worth five points. Instead you sat around at
home surfing the Web for MP3's of songs you were too cheap to buy."
Apparently my alarm clock and my computer have taken to gossiping
with each other. "Well, what is my score?" I asked with some
curiosity.
"Pretty low. It's among the lowest of anyone who has ever lived
your life."
"Come again?"
"Oh, come now. It would be hardly be fair to compare people's
lives if they were all different. Most people are given one life from
a small set of standardized lives. Your life is one of the easier
ones, actually. No real prejudice against your ethnicity or gender,
no major handicaps, no poverty. It's really a waste what you've done
with it."
"Fine. What is my score?"
"I think there are some things you're better off not knowing."
"So far you've taken every available opportunity to be smug and
abusive. I can't imagine you'll let this one slide by."
"True. It would be a shame to end such a wonderful streak. Since
you have so admirably made your case, I will have you know that your
score is 1,030," said the alarm clock finally.
"1,030? That doesn't sound too bad."
"You got 1,000 points for surviving the birthing process."
"How charitable. What are the other points for?"
"You received 15 points for each of the two things you've done
that you truly excelled at."
"I'm honored discover that some part of my life has been deemed
acceptable. What have I excelled at?"
"Well, of all the people who have ever lived your life, you, by
far, have had the longest hair."
"I got points for how long my hair is?"
"We were feeling sorry for you. Consider them sympathy points."
"Okay, that's 15 points. What else?"
"Well, unfortunately for me, you really do have amazing aim when
it comes to hitting the snooze button. You're fully a tenth of a
percent more accurate than your nearest competitor. We're all very
impressed."
"Fifteen points for my hair and fifteen points for hitting the
snooze button? Is this some kind of joke?"
"I've been looking at your life ever since you bought me four
years ago, and I was about to ask you the same question. But, in the
spirit of good play we'll give you another five points. Most people
these days need years of psychotherapy or absurdist conversations with
computers to realize they're screwing up their lives. You just needed
a $25 clock radio. Such frugality is to be commended."
"You mean other people talk about their lives with their home
electronic devices?"
"Well, no," replied the alarm clock. "I was just trying to make you
feel better."
"Great. So now what?"
"Well," the alarm clock continued. "You can continue to waste
your life doing things you hate, or you can decide to do something
with your life. In either case, I would not go make a habit of
talking to electrical appliances if I were you. The people at Circuit
City would start looking at you even more quizzically than they
do now."
And with that, the British voice faded, and the clock face lit up
again, reading "8:41 am". As I watched, the display rolled back to
"8:36". Apparently keeping my clock five minutes fast was finally
good for someting. As this happened the sounds of "Surfin' USA"
filled the room, and my alarm was once again going off.
It's been going off ever since.
