Years ago, I declared war on my screen time. Like many in my generation, I grew up swaddled in the glow of smartphones. At seventeen, I thought “delayed gratification” was a form of medieval punishment. But that all changed thanks to a book I spotted on a school field trip: How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price. That book launched my crusade against the glass rectangle that ruled my life.
Since then, I’ve chipped away at my bad habits like a digital monk. The latest chapter in my holy war? Buying an alarm clock.
My mornings used to go like this: Wake up. Turn off the phone alarm. Respond to texts. Send new texts. Read email. Skim the news. Suddenly, it’s an hour later, I’m still in bed, and I’m late to class. Again.
This isn’t just inefficient, it’s unhealthy. Something needed to be done.
Then came breakfast with my friend Gabriel. Like most spiritual awakenings, mine was prompted by eggs and a good conversation. Gabe brought up the importance of silence. Arguing that we are always filling our time with noise. This reignited my anti-phone campaign.
So the next afternoon, I ventured into Walmart to buy an alarm clock. I wandered aimlessly through the store like a pilgrim in the land of rollback pricing.
There they were: alarm clocks, hiding like forgotten treasure.
I had two options: A $5 electric alarm clock or a $10 twin-bell analog clock that looked like it came from the 1800s and probably haunts children in Victorian ghost stories Naturally, I splurged on the fancy one.
I had no idea I was buying the equivalent of a war crime.
This clock is about ten inches tall and six inches wide, with a sleek black frame, gold hands, and a tiny hammer that could raise the dead. It has no idea what AM or PM means, so it goes off at 7:00 both morning and night. Something my roommate appreciates deeply.
The alarm itself? Imagine if a fire drill, a microwave, and a marching band had a shouting match. That’s the sound it makes. It slams its little hammer between two bells at 400 dings per second, setting off a level of fear I usually reserve for active fires and unannounced quizzes.
You might sit there thinking that “Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” No. This one is wrong constantly. It speeds up about five minutes per day. Every day. That means if I set it correctly on Monday, by Friday it’s waking me up a half hour early. At this rate I’ll adapt to not need sleep by fall.
After a few nights I started to feel different. Not in a good way. I’ve started to wake up in the night panicking, worried that my clock is about to go off. That’s when I realized: this clock was slowly depriving me of sleep, and by keeping it around, I was technically committing war crimes against myself. Sleep deprivation is, in fact, a recognized form of torture under the Geneva Conventions. Meaning I’m committing war crimes… against myself?
No matter when I set the alarm, it goes off twenty minutes early. Every time.
I set it for 7:00, I’m up at 6:40 like it’s being raided by the FBI.
To turn off the alarm, you must remove the battery. No snooze, no mercy. Just a full batteryectomy at dawn. Defeating the entire point of a clock.
And yet despite the mild international violations I’ve grown to love this brass-fueled WMD. It keeps me off my phone. It gets me out of bed. It starts my day with action. Sure, it might be more violent than necessary. But I love it the way you love a ugly puppy. At least I’m not scrolling Facebook in bed anymore.