When I was six, my parents gave me an alarm clock for Christmas so I could wake myself up every morning to watch Power Rangers. It was a digital clock that had an alarm that could be set to the radio, a buzzer,or several different "melodies." Every night, I set the alarm for 6:55 am (giving me five minutes to wake up and get to the television) and set it on Melody 1. And every morning, it woke me up by playing a very electronic beeping version of "It's a Small World After All." I can still hear those first few notes, feel the rush of being startled awake, and the intense dislike of that sound. It became very annoying very quickly.
The other melodies were much shorter, thereby giving me less time to get up and turn the alarm off (somehow it was always across the room, never next to my bed), so I never used them. One was "Yankee Doodle" I think, and the other...I can hear it, but I can't think if it's a real song or not.....nope, no title comes to mind. Sometimes I'd accidentally hit the "Melody" button instead of "Snooze" and I'd have to run through all the songs before I could shut it off. The way it worked, the alarm for the next morning would start wherever I had left off on the day before. So if I turned it off in the middle of the song, it would start playing from there the next morning. For whatever strange electrical reason, occasionally the song played really really fast, and on others it played extremely slow. The slow mornings were agonizing, because in my silly almost-OCD way, I had to let the whole song play out so it would start at the beginning the next morning.
That clock lasted me a very long time. In fact, I do believe I took it to college with me, at least for the first year or two. I eventually switched from the melody over to the radio when I was in high school and decided I had was old enough to not wake up to "It's a Small World After All." I remember looking at the bright red numbers as I tried to fall asleep, watching them change when I blinked. I would sometimes play a game and mentally rearrange the individual segments of the numbers into different times. The blurry red glow was always there when I slept, always there when I awoke.
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Nice Kate. Your images are very vivid and I really like this section,
ReplyDelete"One was "Yankee Doodle" I think, and the other...I can hear it, but I can't think if it's a real song or not.....nope, no title comes to mind."
The way you set this up worked very well, and the elipses allowed me to be be right there with you as you wondered in thought. I was hoping that you would remember the name of the song, I wanted to hear it. But the technique is useful because it engaged me as a reader and I think that you could include/sprinkle this in your longer pieces...
Kate,
ReplyDeleteThis is a great start. What I really want to know is what it signified to you when you decided to switch over from "It's a Small World" to the radio. In what ways does music help shape the way that we view the world, particularly when it's coming from this great symbol of an alarm clock?
It's interesting how such a small thing as an alarm clock, or our choice of an alarm clock, can signify something about who we are or, at least, who we might have been at a particular time. I'm wondering if you might reflect more on that. You mention something about an "OCD" way, but I wonder also if the fact that you listened to this as the wake up for so long says something about your loyalty to your family?
ReplyDeleteMaybe not worth pursuing very far, but the song seems somewhat relevant--the idea of a childhood in a "small world, after all."
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