Snooze Button

I am a habitual snooze button masher. I will lay in bed, sometimes for a full hour or more, hitting the snooze button every 9 minutes. I’ll bounce in and out of true REM sleep the entire time until finally, I roll my carcass out of bed.

This ability amazes my friends and torments my wife. My wife is one of those people who can immediately wake up and start her day. I have this ability too, however it’s only induced by extreme measures…like: burst water pipes, gun fire, screaming child, barking dogs, and acid reflux (I’ll save those stories for another day.)

I also have the ability to sleep through the alarm. It could and has gone off for an hour or more before it actually breaks through my lucidity and forces me to hit the snooze. Again, to the amazement of friends and torment of my wife.

You know those little metal balls that sit on executives’ desks that hang from a series of strings and click back and forth? Wait, that doesn’t sound right. How about this analogy…the scene in my bedroom on most work days looks like some twisted game of “pass it on.” The alarm goes off…my wife slaps me on the chest...I reach over and slap the snooze. This will happen two or three times, then my wife will get out of bed and leave me to my game of “Snooze You Lose” as I continue to grasp at small portions of sleep, exactly 9 minutes apart.

As of Thursday morning, my life is in complete shambles. I broke the snooze button. This has never happened to me before, so it throws off my morning routine. Most people have a set series of actions that they know they can do in the exact amount of time from waking up to arriving at work. I’m one of those people and I’ve got it down to exactly one hour and 5 minutes including dropping my son off at school. Now…I’m screwed.

The first morning was the worst…my brain isn’t prepared to handle tough problem solving that early. So, after five or six futile attempts at tripping the snooze feature, I turned off the alarm and went right back to sleep. And so did my wife, who had no clue that there was an issue with the snooze function.

There was a lot of rushing around that morning, which included the obligatory finger pointing and disbelief that there was actually anything wrong with the snooze button. Considering my mind set, I conceded that it was possible that I dreamed the whole incident…and we went about our day.

The next day I found a feature on the clock that is very similar to the snooze, but just different enough to completely fuck with my brain. The button, which in the five years of owning this clock I had never used or realized it existed, is located less than ¼ inch from the snooze button. It’s called “Alarm Reset”. It turns off the alarm like snooze does, however the alarm will not sound again for 24 hours. Not good if you’re expecting only 9 minutes.

Again, there was much rushing around.

So why did the snooze button suddenly stop working? It cannot possibly be the 5200+ times that I’ve hit that button in the last 5 years. I blame our throw away society that builds alarm clocks using the cheapest labor and materials. Tester Number 5 in China should not have cleared this malfunctioning demon box for release to the general public. If I could remember where I bought this, I’d return it…maybe Nordstrom’s will take it back.

There are several items in this world that should be indestructible by normal human interaction: Door Handles, Shoe Laces, Soft Soap Dispensers, Straws, Zippers, TV Remotes, and Snooze Buttons.

Please write your congressman.