Off to Never, Never Land

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

I have some deep flaws. In reality, most of us probably have flaws, some of which are obvious and other which we try to keep to ourselves. In some cases, only those close to you know about them, and the fact that they know about these things and associate with you anyway is perhaps the very definition of "close."

Those close to me (or at least who have lived under the same roof as I have at some point) know about one of my deep flaws: I have a real problem with alarm clocks. I know there is a big "nature vs. nurture" argument regarding those with this issue, so I won't get into that, but I don't think I really recognized this in myself until college.

My freshmen year, two things happened. One, I lived with maybe the most entertaining collection of roommates ever assembled, which meant that those of us who actually went to class didn't sleep much. Second, being a bit clueless about fundamentally important things like registering for classes, I found out in my first day of Anatomy that I was supposed to have registered for a lab, and the only ones left at that point were at 7:00 A.M. I probably looked a bit like a cadaver by the time that semester was over, and I'm pretty sure I slept through a few alarms in the process.

I must have explained the situation to my mom, because she went to Walmart or somewhere like that and tested every alarm in the store until she found the loudest one. You would think that would have fixed the problem. While it did lower (to some degree) the chances that I'd sleep through my alarm altogether, the alarm-clock makers obviously didn't test the product on someone like me.

For the following few years as a missionary in Korea, the problem sort of went into dormancy, maybe because I had a mandated bed time or perhaps because I was sleeping on the floor - not sure. My alarm clock waited faithfully for two years, though, and was ready to go back into service when I came back and stopped going to bed at a decent hour. My problem returned in force and wasn't helped at all by the fact that I roomed with H.I., who somehow couldn't hear my "nuclear attack warning" alarm either.

This led to me sleeping through my alarm far too many times, both for my sake and for the sake of the people in my building (I know some of my roommates wanted to strangle me at times, but one day I even heard someone from another apartment yell "thank you" when I finally turned off my alarm). I don't think there is anything quite like the panic of waking up & realizing that you've slept through your alarm. There are different levels of panic, of course - I mean, being late for class isn't the same as being late for your wedding. My problem was that I had a shirt-and-tie 7:00 A.M. job teaching at the Missionary Training Center, so it wasn't like I could just throw on a hat & go. I knew that when I ran in with a somewhat wrinkled shirt and sweat on my brow, my missionaries (who expected me to be inspiring and entertaining) would know that I had a rough night.

I left that job and got married, but now it seems I did so a bit deceitfully since I never really told her about my condition. To preserve my marriage, I have stopped using my early-'90s vintage bionic alarm for the most part and switched to using my cell phone on vibrate, but my problem has mutated like something in a Michael Crichton book. I now hear my alarm most of the time (either on my own or with a nudge from the other side of the bed), but I've become a chain snoozer - I can hit that button a good 10 times in a row and fall back asleep instantly every time. Jack Bauer would crack under that kind of torture, but she is still with me, so I suppose it isn't a fatal flaw - yet.