Shout-Out To An Inanimate Object

There are very few things in this world you can count on, besides the often-heard ‘death and taxes’. Besides that there isn’t much, except for maybe the fact that the backup quarterback is always more popular until he plays or that nobody ever hears Don Williams and says, “That was some terrible music!”

But then there is my clock radio. I’ve had it since middle school, if I’m recollecting right. It has woken me up for probably more than half of my life, and it shows no signs of slowing down. (You could say that it appears that it’ll just keep on ticking. Har!) It’s rousted me out of bed for just about everything, including school, work, church, and morning hikes.

It is neither sleek nor aerodynamic, like so many products in today’s I-Pod era. Instead, it is like a car from the eighties: built entirely out of right angles. The radio doesn’t work very well on it anymore, but I only use it for an alarm clock, and that is where it excels.

It has been with me everywhere: From Fulton, Michigan to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, to Plymouth, Minnesota. It has been a constant, stalwart, quiet companion who does not talk back except for the annoying beeping it emits every morning when I need to wake up. Still, it’s only doing it for my own good, so I hold nothing against it.

My favorite story about my clock radio was the morning when it woke me up andI was still so groggy that I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to shut it off, even though I’d pressed the same button to turn it off for many years prior to that. After staring at it stupidly for what seemed like hours, my brain finally came up with a solution, and so I unplugged it, just so it would stop the incessant beeping. (Note: I didn’t say it was a good story. It is just the best one I have.)

I’m not sure why I’m writing about a clock radio. There is nothing inherently exciting about it, but maybe that’s part of its charm. It just goes out and gets the job done every time it's called upon without frills or need for recognition. It’s basically like getting the Cal Ripkin Jr. of electronics, and, now that I think about it, perhaps more things in this world should be like that.