Persistence of Time, but Impersistence of a Clock

[tiwonge]

My alarm clock died yesterday. I got this alarm clock as a Christmas present in 6th grade. I had trouble waking up in the morning, which might have motivated that present. Maybe because it was new, it was really loud. (And, by new, I meant that I'd never been awakened like that before. It was always Mom coming in, and not some electronic siren going off.) I don't know if it got quieter as it got older, but I gradually learned to tune it out, or at least, ignore its cries for attention. It's a bit sad as I look at its blank face now, but there aren't many stories that can be told of an alarm clock, not even a 27 year old clock. I can't really eulogize it. There are some holes in it where my college roommate shot it with a staple gun, and my first year on the reservation, I kept a set of batteries in it for the irregular power failures. (These got less frequent, so I don't think I replaced them after they died.) And this last year, I probably should have suspected it was on its last legs. It kept losing time. I didn't have to change the clock for Daylight Savings Time--since we changed to Standard time, the clock had lost an hour. I used to just subtract 15 minutes, or 35 minutes, or 40 minutes, or an hour from the time, rather than just set it to the correct time. By the time Daylight Savings Time came, it was an hour off. I guess the country decided to correct itself to my clock's time. In the week or so since then, it had lost another few minutes.

I'm going to have to go shopping for an alarm clock soon, for the first time in my life.