Lately I’ve been having a problem with waking up. I have an alarm clock that plays CDs. Right now there is a Jimi Hendrix CD in there, and the volume is on as high as it can possibly go. The past few nights, I set the alarm to 6 AM. It goes off. Do I wake up?
If you can’t figure out this one, read the title again. Nope. I wake up around 6:25. This gives me little time to get ready for school.
So last night I decided that if I was getting up 25 minutes late, then set the alarm back. I tried 5:45, thinking maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll only last 15 minutes. So I go to bed.
I stirred, and looked at the clock. I sighed. You can probably guess.
6:25.
I really should stick something like Rammstein or Anal Cunt in there. Ideally, I would have a programmable alarm clock so I could program it to yell “AUUUUGHHHH! FOR GOD’S SAKES, LISTEN TO PHELPS!!!” a la Phelp’s Matt Shepard tribute. Or maybe “HEY EVERYBODY! I’M LOOKING AT GAY PORNO”.
My parents are disturbed by the alarm, they tell me to turn it off. And I’m not even fucking woken up by it.
I hate alarm clocks. I think I’ll set it back to 5:35, though I’m still expecting to wake up and see 6:25.
Set four alarms to go off five minutes apart. If that doesn’t work, set eight the same way. Eventually, if you get enough alarms, one is bound to wake you up, right?
Wow, I was going to post an almost identical thread, but you beat me to it.
Get an alarm that instead of playing music, emits ear-piercing high-pitched beeps. Mine does that, and I ALWAYS wake up, my problem is that I just don’t stay awake. My body is physically incapable of dragging my lazy ass out of bed, so I just turn off the alarm and pass out again.
I blame this on my chronic insomnia. Damned if I haven’t gone to sleep before 2:00 AM in years, but that’s a whole different bag of worms!
I tune my clock-radio to a spot halfway between tejano music and pure static. Then I turn it up all the way, and place it as far from my bed as possible.
By the time Ican drag myself arcoss the floor to turn the damned noise off, I’m in easy reach of my FX neo hard minty eyedrops.
I have been known to, while asleep, take an alarm clock, travel about a hundred feet to a sink, disassemble said alarm clock, place it in the dishwasher, and then go back to sleep under my bed. This happens in periods of high stress.
My solution, such as it is, is two alarm clocks, one close by, one set in a location that I have to get out of bed to reach, set for the same time.
You might have sleep apnea, or something that otherwise keeps you from getting enough rest. Ideally, you should be able to hear the alarm and get out of bed feeling reasonably refreshed. That this is not happening is proof enough you don’t get enough rest. Solving that problem would take care of all others in this vein. Go to bed earlier, get a better bed, or see a sleep specialist, if you must.
My alarm clock has a high pitched, teeth-grinding screech. The button that turns it off only works about half the time. So I leap out of bed and find myself waking up while frantically pushing this button and yelling “Shut the fuck up! I’m awake!” You should do the same.
My friend Jocelyn has a Hello Kitty alarm clock that repeats “Good Morning! Good Morning!” over and over at a high volume until she goes across the room to turn it off. By that time, she’s already up.
Don’t know if that would work for you. Set alarm clocks all around the room, and turn the radio music alarm on for good measure. Maybe that’ll do it. (although turn the radio to static or something too)
If you were awake even once, you could put the alarm across the room. Most people can stay up after getting up to smack the radio. As for how to get you awake faster, I’m sure you’d stir to silence Shania Twain.
Or you could get an alarm clock like the one in Abre los ojos that just repeats “Abre los ojos” (Open your eyes) until you wake up.
Just a thought - if you go for the obnoxious/ lots of alarm clocks route that people seem to be suggesting, gosh, I hope your significant other is way more tolerant than I am in the morning!
I have the same problem. I have an alarm with those loud annoying shrill beeps…I end up dreaming that my alarm goes off and no matter what I do to the clock, it will not turn off.
Seriously…at least once a week, I have a dream that turning off, smashing, pitching it out the window, dumping it in tubs of water, etc, doesn’t work, and the alarm just keeps going until I get so agitated in my dreams THAT wakes me up. Only problem then is I wake up bitchy and tend to stay that way for a few hours.
I have a great idea for an alarm clock for chronic oversleepers like myself, but I ain’t tellin’ until I get it patented.
Meanwhile, here’s one that I’ve used on occasions when I absolutely cannot afford to oversleep: get a digital appliance timer (gotta be digital, you need to be precise). Set it for 6 AM or whatever. Then, plug your vacuum cleaner into the timer, and place it near your bed, but with the switch in an inconvenient location.
Nothing like a vacuum’s roar to get your ass moving in the morning, I tell ya what.
aurelian, it should be clear by my routine that I’m single.
Really, just put yer alarm as far from your bed as you can while still in hearing range. Unless you are one of those folks who would end up putting it in the dishwasher…
Get another alarm clock and position it similarly.
You may reach one, but there’s more fun.
Finally:
Subscribe to a bloody wake up call service. They’re cheap and it’s better than losing your job over being tardy. This is a big problem for a dear friend of mine and I made her swear to call a wake up service. She was their umpteenth subscriber and won a free year’s worth of service. Sometimes life is good.
I heard a really annoying, really incredibly obnoxious alarm clock in a dept. store last year around Xmas. Sneering voice: “Hey, baby, wakeup, hey-baby, wake up! Hahahaha, hahahaha, [sound of rooster crowing] [repeat].” I wanted to throw it across the room, right there in the store. So, since I have the same problem as described in the OP, I almost bought it. Should have.
Probably I would have become immune to it after awhile.
(Result of problem: My grade school child, late for school 68 out of 180 days last year.)
In Japan the public railroad company has developed the guaranteed perfect alarm clock.
It works like this:
There is a tube of pressurized air connected to the alarm clock, and when the alarm goess off - it releases air into a pouch which is mounted under your mattress in your bed. It fills rapidly and will tilt you in a really awkward angle making it impossible to sleep through. If mounted in a certain way, and given a big enough size of the air pouch, I guess it could tip you off the bed too…
This alarm system is mounted in all train masters’ bedrooms making sure they are ALWAYS on time for work.
When I was in college and slept in a loft, I kept my alarm clock down the ladder and across the room. I have reliable witnesses who report that I could climb down the ladder, turn off the alarm and climb back into the bed without ever waking up.
Now I have a clock with two alarms set as loud as they’ll go. The first is set to “annoying beep” and the second, which goes off ten minutes after the first, is set to radio static. I findthat, even though I might turn off the first in my sleep, it isn’t deep, deep delta sleep and the second alarm is able to work the magic.
