Illustration by Jan Igoe
For most of my life, I have been surrounded—as in trapped, ambushed or held hostage—by morning people. Perky, peppy morning people whose primary purpose for existing is to make the nocturnal more miserable than we already are at 6 a.m.
It’s not really their fault. When nature wires us up, everybody is assigned an internal clock. But you can’t reset it, replace it or regift it. We’re biologically compelled to strut around crowing at the first glimpse of dawn or doomed to be vampire bats in a world full of early worm catchers.
I’ve always done my best sleeping when it’s time to rise and shine—or in my case, stumble and schlep—into another premature day. Years ago, to make sure I’d get to 8 a.m. classes on time, I’d strategically station five of the loudest alarm clocks I could find around my apartment. (There’s strength in numbers.) Many of them got free flying lessons while I was semiconscious. Turns out that crash landing into unsuspecting walls will silence their buzzers just as well as the off button, but it gets expensive.
Finally, science has come to rescue the hard-of-waking. Ingenious inventor Simone Giertz, who dubs herself the “mistress of malfunctions,” has devised a state-of-the-art wake-up machine that has a synthetic rubber arm, attached to a rotating motor, that sits above your head. When morning arrives, the arm starts spinning and smacks you upside the head (at 165 revolutions per minute) until diving out of bed is a matter of survival.
Judging from all the duct tape, the wake-up machine is still in the prototype stage, but I found some other alarms to help pry that first eye open. The latest thinking is to get your body moving right away, so your brain will follow. That’s what the target alarm can do. It wakes you up Clint Eastwood style.
This alarm features a small, round target over the clock. When the alarm sounds, you’re supposed to grab the laser gun that came with it (unless you sleep packing) and shoot the bull’s-eye to shut it up. If you can’t get both eyes open simultaneously, have trouble finding your fingers or need trifocals to see who is in the mirror, the alarm will keep blaring long enough to awaken most of the block.
I may try a Clocky first. It’s an alarm clock sandwiched between two big wheels that leaps off your nightstand and runs around beeping (and possibly laughing) until you capture it. Clocky must be pretty quick, because one Amazon reviewer had to chase his all the way to the kitchen. If there’s coffee waiting there, Clocky and I could be buds.
I’ve looked at other contraptions that make you lift weights, answer test questions, jump on a floor pad or chase a flying propeller to turn the alarm off, but they all require mental and physical dexterity that some of us can’t summon before noon.
There’s a more extreme option I’m considering: electric shock. Pavlok makes a wristband to vibrate or zap the unwilling into consciousness. Since no one likes getting zapped, the device trains you to get up right away. It’s the same premise as an electric fence that keeps dogs in their yard, but you don’t have to wear a collar.
If any fellow vampires have been electrocuted or injured by any of these alarms, please let me know. We’ll schlep on over to my attorney and start a class-action suit. Hopefully, they’ll hear the case in night court.
EDITOR’S NOTE: South Carolina Living is reprinting some of Jan A. Igoe’s previous columns. This “Humor Me” originally appeared in the November 2017 issue. Visit SCLiving.coop/news/in-memory-of-jan-igoe.