Alarm Clock Anathema

I hate alarm clocks. I mean, I really hate them.

It’s not getting up early that’s the problem. I’m a morning person, and if I don’t get up early, I feel as if the day has gotten away from me and I have to rush to catch up. I like to have an early morning quiet time, and I enjoy exercise most in the early mornings. My energy level is at its highest in the mornings. I can think more clearly, work more efficiently, and accomplish more.

But early mornings are so much more enjoyable when I don’t have to wake up to the awful screaming blare of the alarm clock. Instead of a gentle floating to the surface of awareness, a stretch, and a smile to greet the day, an alarm clock jolts me awake, shoots adrenaline through my system, and causes my stomach to clench. If today is the first day of the rest of my life, I’d sure like it to begin a little more pleasantly. I read once, I think in Prevention magazine, maybe, about an alarm clock that combines a light that gradually gets brighter with a gentle vibration that slowly increases the intensity of its humming, but I haven’t actually run across one.

I actually dread my alarm so much, that I often wake up before it even goes off. What really astounds me is that my youngest son can sleep through an alarm going off repeatedly, only about six inches from his head. Many mornings I’ve woken up early to avoid my alarm, and sit enjoying my coffee in the quiet early-morning hours, only to have to go beat on his door upstairs to make him turn his alarm off.

Alarm clocks are not the only noise that I dislike in the early morning. I don’t like the television to be on either, or the radio, come to think of it. Let there be peace on earth in the mornings, and let it begin with me.