the Unexpressed Advantage

I don't know what the people on earth were thinking when they made the standard "snooze" time on an alarm clock 9 minutes. Well, actually, I do know what they were thinking. They were thinking, "hmmm.. because of the complex nature of this mechanical device, I don't really know how to make it snooze for any more than nine minutes. So I guess nine minutes will have to be the standard snooze time…"

That was in like 1831. Since then, either most clocks, both digital and analog have remained sufficiently elusive to today's top mechanical engineers and scientists to the point where they still don't know how to make the snooze cycle go longer than 9 minutes, or for some reason they have just decided that 9 minutes is a good amount of time for one to "snooze" when avoiding getting up in the morning.

Let me ask you this question…

Have you ever laid down to take a nine-minute-nap?

NO? Oh.

Ok, well then how 'bout this…

Have you ever felt exceedingly tired, and intentionally gone to the couch for what you might call a "snooze" and figure that would probably take you about nine minutes?

Oh. You don't do that either. I see.

I'd like to speak to whoever is in charge of clocks and point out to them that most people, in fact, all people usually take naps or "snoozes" that are more than 9 minutes long. In fact, health experts generally recommend that when you nap you should nap for about 20-22 minutes. Shorter than that and you won't benefit from the rest, longer than that and you'll fall in to a deeper sleep that will make you feel worse when you come out of it.

So Why still the 9-minute snooze?

...To drive me insane. That's why.

I thought I could probably solve this problem by putting my "screaming-two-year-old" loud alarm across the room. Then when it went off in the morning, I would have to get up to turn it off or hit snooze, and that would make me want to stay up.

I found out a couple of things from this experiment.

1. Apparently I can sleep through my screaming two year old loud alarm if I'm tired enough.

2. Walking across the room to turn off my alarm or hit snooze does not make me want to stay up. In fact it seems to be irrelevant to my snoozing behaviour. As far as I can tell, If I had to get up, put on clothes, brush my teeth, get on my bike, and climb a telephone pole to hit the snooze button on my alarm, it would be just fine for me to go backwards through that process until I was back in my bed. In my bed for at most, 9 minutes; at which point said imaginary process would begin again.

I don't understand why the snooze section of my night's is only 9 minutes long. The people in charge of clocks might say, "well, you get that extra nine minutes of sleep! Good for you!"

That would be like having me eating a piece of cheesecake and then after I was done throwing a crumb at me and saying, "Good for you!"

morons

Dear whoever is in charge of making clocks. Please change the snooze time to 20-22 minutes – Unless you're trying to drive me crazy; in which case I'd like to commend you for an excellent job, well done!