![]() It’s priceless and we probably can’t function as adults (or young adults) without them.Įven though what I have is an “upgrade” in the technological sense, I can’t help but feel like a special part of me is gone now. And as long as it has power (and even if it doesn’t) it’ll keep time and keep YOU in time. No patches, no hackers (well, maybe), no subscriptions, no accounts, no Alarm Clock X or Alarm Clock Galaxy S9 that you have to upgrade to as part of a planned obsolescence. There’s no special setup other than first making sure the time is set right, and then setting the alarm. In an era where an increasing number of people use their phones as alarm clocks, there really is something special about a device that wakes you up, on time, to start your day. My alarm clock (well, any alarm clock for that matter) probably fits into that category perfectly. There’s an entire class of tools and technologies, though, that don’t seem as, well, “sexy” as the latest smartphone. Stuff you read about all the time when people talk about groundbreaking inventions. Most of us can remember a time before we had them, and then we’d probably pick something like a cell phone, or a laptop computer. Is it the really the same, though? When does something like an alarm clock stop being just a device and end up being something you get so attached to? Is it because it’s reliable? Simple? If you think about your favorite and most useful pieces of technology, you’d pick the most obvious: smartphones, am I right? How can we ever go back to a time where we didn’t have them. It’s got a nice display, it’s loud, and I can just tell the nice lady to set an alarm. In the place where we used to have the clock radio, now there’s an Echo Spot. I came back up from the basement, and walked back towards the bedroom. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, years… it just kept on keeping me on-time. I probably spilled different fluids on it. It’s always been there so many stages of my life. For my first day of full-time employment. It helped me listen to the events of 9/11 unfold as I listened to Howard Stern that fateful morning. That same clock radio was there while I was studying and I wanted to hear music (yes, before we only listened to music through our computers or smart devices). It was there to wake me up for 8 AM college classes. It was there to wake me up to make sure I got to my SATs on time. It was there to wake me up before school every day. I feel like as I’ve grown up with this alarm clock too. And best of all? This sucker was LOUD and would wake me (and roommates/college neighbors/apartment neighbors) up every time, without fail. Dual alarms that could use the radio, too. Speakers that made everything sound like had a decent amount of kick. A CD player, to play all my Ice Cube albums. This baby had it all: nice LCD back-lit display. I received this alarm clock as a birthday present when I was in 10th grade, back in 1996, and man was I hyped. It was then I realized: this old alarm clock was my favorite piece of technology I’ve owned over the course of my life. I couldn’t just set this out for the trash. Couldn’t she see how hard this was for me? Here I was, taking something I’ve used, without fail, for almost every day of the past 21 years of my life. “You’re a hoarder, you should just throw it away” my wife said. It’s currently sitting next to old laptop bags, motherboard retail boxes from computers I built years ago, and leftover carpet from when I redid the living room floor. It wasn’t the same as throwing it away, but it might as well have been. If I was almost in tears when I unplugged it from the wall, then I was certainly 100% crying as I carried my Magnavox AJ 3920 Clock Radio down my basement steps and placed it, carefully (as a sign of reverence) on a shelf in my basement.
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