Through a Stunning Invention

I want to tell you about a wretched relationship between me and a certain object. Almost every day of the year and every year of my life it is the focus of my deep resentment. Long ago it made it very clear to me who was in control, and in a stunning way.

In the early hours of silence and darkness, long before any bird had thought to chirp or dog to bark, into this blessed calm broke forth a piercing, shrill racket that filled my room. In my drowsy confusion I was unable to locate where the din was coming from. Frantic, desperate, I lurched forward in an attempt to suppress my tormenter. I had turned the wrong way. Instead of scrambling out of bed I had crashed my head against the wall. No wonder I describe my alarm clock as a stunning invention! Even an alarming one! And now, every single day some member of this troublesome breed jerks me into consciousness – mercifully, rarely in the stunning way I have just described.

The awful thing is I can’t do without it. I can’t afford to get rid of it. This is one of the necessary evils in my life. I resent every time it asserts its necessary existence at my expense. I despise the fact that it was designed to disrupt the peace of that most blessed gift from God – the sleep I need. And I paid good money to provide it with the opportunity to do so

I haven’t yet finished grumbling about alarm clocks. Time was when they expended all their energy and exhausted their malicious intent in one single assault. Now, because of modern technology, the wretched things make their clamorous row for a short while, and then allow me to relax and recover from the trauma of being forced into consciousness. Just when my guard is down, it resumes its onslaught with yet another bout of jangling sound. And so the cycle continues – start-stop-start stop… These are the tactics of the torture chamber – pain-respite-pain-respite. They throw me off balance for the rest of the day.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m grousing about the snooze devise that has converted a single-strike weapon into a successive strike one! Is this progress? All I can say is that this ghastly invention has the saving grace of providing for one of the most urgent necessities in my life.

It is only my noisy alarm clock, with its repeated attempts to catch my attention that will get me to rise at unfashionable hours for something that is important, even precious, in my life. I mean the Prayer of the Church that we recite together every morning – it seems like night- in the Cathedral, Barbados. Let no-one speak to me about over-sleeping or about feeling too tired to go to church. I know all about this. The only recourse is to a certain stunning, alarming, invention.

Drastic tactics? Necessary tactics? I Reach God ….My Way…Through My Alarm Clock.

Next week Isidore will reflect on Meeting God at an Airport.