Monday, November 2, 2009

The Dreaded Snooze

Whoever came up with this button is pure EVIL I say!

It all started off when I was in school, my brother and I shared a bedroom and since I was the younger one, I had to sacrifice precious sleep in the morning to get done in the bathroom and still leave him enough time to wake up and get ready for school… So anyways, we had an alarm clock on our desk (the opposite side of the room) which would go off about 1 ½ hours before the school bus left. I would wake up, run across the room smack the snooze button and run back into bed for another 10 minutes of bliss. The second time the alarm went off I would wake up, run across the room, switch it off and get ready for school. A few years later, my brother left for university which left me a room to myself. I kept the alarm clock habit but now I could sleep longer. I would set the alarm for the exact same time, but instead of waking up after one ten minute snooze I could afford to do wake up after 3 snoozes and still make it in time for the bus.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!

Wake up, hit snooze button, back into bed

(ten mins later) BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!

Wake up hit, snooze button, back into bed

(ten mins later)…

Years passed and I moved onto university where I quickly realized that I could take even more snooze opportunities (most lectures started later than school). Things kind of progressed to a stage where, as a semi-scheduleless postgraduate, I could pretty much hit snooze from 4 am till 11am (this has happened before) using the same old “waking up every ten minutes running out of bed smacking the snooze button and getting back to sleep…” routine.

I can even have long dreams in my 10 minute interval snoozes. Okay so most of them get cut off before concluding (e.g. I recently had a dream segment wherein I had placed a few 5 rand coins on a train track (I’ve always wanted to do this). I was patiently waiting for a train to come past to see what would happen to the coins when…

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!

Wake up, hit snooze button…

I really should have stayed awake but I decided to go back to sleep to see if my dream would continue where it left off (it didn’t) and before I knew it was 10am!


I’d love to set up a video camera to see how I can just wake up and press the snooze button over and over without even realizing it… I have now gotten to a stage where I need two alarm clocks, one set at 4 am that starts the snooze cycle and another at a staggered time later on which interrupts the snooze cycle from the first alarm clock and wakes me up. It’s a good thing I don’t have a room-mate, they would probably have suffocated me with a pillow by now…

While doing a search for a nice picture of a snooze button I came across this post (it seems like I’m not the only one with a problem of this nature). Some brilliant ideas for alarm clocks here that make me want to own them all (except for the bacon one…).

http://blog.cartelagency.com/tag/snooze-button/

6 comments:

Helen said...

That link is awesome! I want a throwable alarm clock!

I always thought that snooze was a funny word. And I can snooze for HOURS, it's evil! My old alarm cock used to make the time intervls sshorter and shorter and then refuse to snooze, too bad i don't have it anymore (balanced it on my bedside lamp to get the hands to glow and it may have melted over the lightbulb which may or may not have exploded...)

EEbEE said...

Isn't it! The bomb diffusal kit alarm clock is awesome.

but the the whole snooze/alarmclock thing is kind of like an evolutionary arms race. The more innovative alarm clocks become, the better we will get at snoozing.

I'm convinced that future generations of humans won't have ears as a result

(no not really...)

Luke said...

Why not just set your alarm for 07h00 and not snooze, thus avoiding your problem altogether...?

EEbEE said...

I would if I could. The seemingly pointless snooze cycle is actually how I work, I need it! It is part of my waking up process without which I would... well I'm not sure what I would do, perpetual sleep I presume.

I just remembered a red indian technique for waking up in the morning. They used to drink a crap load of water before going to bed and then their bladders would wake them up in the morning. I might try that...

po said...

Sigh. This is basicaly the story of my life. I could get up at the first alarm, I could just set my alarm 10 minutes later, but no I keep pressing the damn snooze button, WHY?

EEbEE said...

It is truely annoying how helpless we are...