Give Myself a Hand

I consider myself a fairly intelligent person. I’m not a genius by any means. But, I do my own taxes. I went to college. I can add large numbers without using a calculator, pen and paper, or my fingers. So I am not generally confused by a lot of things and rarely do my friends have to say, “Come on, man! It’s not rocket science!” And a long time ago, I vowed to always use my powers for good. With great power comes great responsibility, after all (thank you Spider-Man).

But there are certain times when any semblance of intellect seems to fly right out the window. Like when my alarms go off after just five hours of sleep. I turn into a complete moron, flailing like a crazy person to figure out what is making that horrible noise. The problem is that I have been forced to outsmart myself. I have an alarm clock that my hand has memorized. So when it starts to buzz, my hand wakes up before my brain and skips right past the giant “Snooze” button and finds the teeny-weeny “Off” button on the side. And having a hand with a mind of its own has one drawback in this case. I was always late, because I hit Snooze about 9 times without even knowing it. So after a week of waking up really late, I decided to add a second alarm on my cell phone and then put the cell phone upside down on my side table. I figured that if I did that, my hand wouldn’t have enough time to decipher the cell phone puzzle before the buzzing woke my brain up. I know, absolutely brilliant.

The problem I encountered, and still encounter to this day, is that my brain can’t figure out the two-alarm issue either. I just start hitting stuff and pounding on Snooze buttons that don’t exist. I can’t keep anything sharp within five feet of my side table for fear of impaling my smart hand. And it usually ends with my wife physically shaking me and yelling, “Get a hold of yourself, man!” Then she calmly walks over to my side of the bed, turns on the light, and hits “Off” on both alarms (which have been forcibly moved to the floor). It takes another ten minutes for me to get it together (stop crying) and another five minutes to figure out how to get out of the covers.

So now I have to find a new system that is smarter than my hand, but only as smart as my brain. Otherwise, I’ll have proven that I am actually smarter than myself.