I have the magic solution for everyone who has trouble waking up in the morning.

I’ve always had trouble in this area. Most alarm clocks give a paltry “beep beep…beep beep” that barely wakes you up enough to hit the snooze button. There was one point in my life when I used a radio alarm clock, but it wasn’t long until that didn’t work at all. I simply had American Idol dreams. And lately I’ve been using my cell phone alarm, which is just as paltry and weak as the “beep beep…beep beep” ones. Only it has the added bonus that if you snooze it five times it stops snoozing and just turns off.

What about parents waking me up? That used to work for me, for a while, until I found out how to snooze parents. When the call you, sit up in bed. When the leave, go back to sleep. It’s that simple. They’ll probably call you again in five minutes or so.

The only thing that ever really worked for me was having my little sister leap onto my bed and bounce around, accidentally pulling my hair, while yelling “Emily! Emily! Get up!!” right in my ear. Which is not a very pleasant experience, even if it does wake you up.

Well, there was that time when I was at my friend Stephy’s house. She had an extremely loud alarm clock, and when it went off I sat up in bed yelling, “Fire drill! It’s a fire drill!!!!”

A few days before we had had a fire drill at school, see, and we all had to run out to the light pole at the end of the parking lot. So I was pretty sure, for about three seconds between sleep and awake, that we were going to have to run to the pole in our pajamas and bare feet.

That’s how loud Stephy’s alarm clock was. School fire alarm loud.

Now did you notice the part where I mentioned the three seconds between sleep and awake? See, normally I have about an hour between sleep and awake. I snooze the alarm clock five times, sort-of sleep for about twenty minutes after that, then get up, finally, but don’t really wake up for another fifteen minutes or so.

Three seconds. One hour. Which would you choose? So I went on a campaign to find an alarm clock like Stephy’s.

You know how in pictures of alarm clocks it always shows those two funny bumps on top?

(I’m trying to insert a picture of an alarm clock right here, but I can’t figure out how :-()

That’s the kind I wanted. That’s the kind Stephy had. Because when the little clapper dings between those two bells, it makes a very very loud sound.

So for a while I kept an eye out at the thrift store for one, but finally, yesterday, I just went out to walmart and bought one for ten bucks.

Then, last night, while having a very New Horizons dream about babies getting locked up in thrift stores, I heard it. “BRINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” It was loud. I ran to turn it off.

I could have snoozed it and gotten back into bed. But I didn’t want to hear that noise again. Plus, the alarm clock had really woken me up good and proper.

So I got up. And ate breakfast. And it was really cool, cause it was like I had a whole extra hour in my day.