Snooze Button

I don't understand the lure of the Snooze Button. I'm usually awake long before the alarm goes off anyway, but even if that were not the case I should think being woken by the alarm just once would be quite enough.

Boomerang Boy is a Snooze Button fiend. I don't know how he does it (or why, frankly). Why would you set an alarm to wake you half an hour before you have any intention of getting up anyway? Why not set it for the later time in the first place and have an uninterrupted final half hour of slumber?

BB's morning routine goes something like this. The alarm - which is about the same volume as an air raid siren - goes off at 5.15am. And again at 5.24am. And then again at 5.33am. Somehow, amazingly, he goes back to sleep in those short minutes between alarms. This is even more amazing when you consider he has to get out of bed and run to the other end of the room to hit the Snooze Button, then get back into bed again. He apparently does this because otherwise he would fling out an arm in his sleep and never realise he was hitting the Snooze Button, and would never get out of bed. Of course. Boy logic.

Now, if someone or something kept waking me up every 9 minutes and making me run around the room, (a) I would punch them/throw them out the window, and (b) it wouldn't happen anyway – once I am awake I am awake, usually for the next 16-18 hours. In 9 minutes I could never get back to sleep, even if I desperately wanted to. Especially if I had been cruelly snatched from sleep by something louder than AC/DC and shriller than a two year-old in tantrum mode.

Fortunately I am always already awake by the time BB starts his daily Snooze Button routine – but even in my wakeful state, the blast of his alarm every 9 minutes is enough to drive me mental. Boomerang Boy, poor pet, is one of those unfortunates who sleeps soundly for hours on end, any time of the day or night, and could sleep through a bomb blast. Not for him a gentle wake-up to the soothing strains of ABC Classic FM. Oh no, that would never work. For him it's got to be the air-raid siren. At least three times every morning.