The Loudest Known Clock

In fifth grade, my friends began to get their bedrooms updated to "teen appropriate." For most of them, it was trading out pastels for bold, older colors. They went from pink to bold teal, light purple to bright blue, pastel yellow to in your face purple. Growing up, I had teal painted walls with a balloon wallpaper border along the top. I also had very dark furniture and got no direct light in my room.

It was dark.

I wanted to lighten up while all my friends were telling me it was time to live in a cave.

While I enjoy jewel tones, I was with my mother when she said we'd go lighter and brighter. We went to the local wallpaper store and got a ton of books filled with wallpaper. So much wallpaper. We laid them out on my bed and discussed what should go in the room. I was attracted to plaids and stripes. My mother feared the day I was let out on my own to decorate. (I've never put wallpaper on walls ever, so do not fear for my house.) In the end, she narrowed it down to a flowery print and said she'd let me have one wall of striped, as one of the coordinating papers was a stripe pattern. I distinctly remember telling her I wanted the blue color, as I hated pink. I've hated pink since it was declared that pink is the color little girls liked. My favorite color is purple, but I hated light shades of it for a very long time, so I chucked the light purple flowery one out.

Somehow, I wound up with a pink room.

So much pink.

My mother informed me she went with pink because I already had pink bedspreads and curtains and I didn't need new ones. So, I got stuck with a very pink room. And green carpet.

It took my mother a very long time to wallpaper the entire room. It is a large room and there was a pattern to match. After she was done she declared she was never taking that paper down or putting any more up. (She wallpapered her bathroom and our bathroom, but to this day my room is still pink flowers and stripes.)

I remember being horrified upon entering the room at the sight of all the pink. It didn't even match the bedspreads and curtains. It did match the carpet.

I'm not sure how long I had been living in the pink flowery room before The Clock showed up. It took me forever to tell time and I still can't tell time very well, so having an analog clock wasn't exactly high on my list of things I wanted. Somehow, I wound up with a clock. It was a dusty rose plastic thing with a white face, black numbers, and hands. It was a cheap plasticky nightmare that we should have just chucked out after that first night of hell.

How does a stupid clock cause hell on Earth? Oh, by being the loudest clock in the world. Honest. You can hear the freaking thing in the basement. Everyone in the house hated the clock, yet it remained on the wall till the day I moved out at 23. Everyone knew where I was if I answered the phone in my room. It was the creepiest thing to be in the house alone because you could hear the stupid thing in every single room. My mom put cotton on the outside to dampen the sound, but it did nothing.

After my daughter was born, I found the clock in the closet when I was going through some old papers my mom had kept. She wanted to know what I wished to keep and what she could throw out. I stared at the clock with a little nostalgia. Even though I'd spent the majority of my childhood hating the loudest clock known to man, upon leaving home I found I often was unable to sleep without loud ticking. I slept on top of my watch when I got really desperate. In Scotland, I went to Tesco and bought a wind-up alarm clock because it was the only analog clock they had for sale.

It was super loud. (Side story: I would always confuse people who'd stop by my room because it was never the right time. I strictly used it for the noise, so I didn't bother to keep the time right if I happen to miss a winding cycle.)

My mom gave me the loudest ticking clock known to man to put in my daughter's room.

"You know, to use instead of that sound machine."

The sound machine broke, but while I hung the clock on the wall, I didn't put a battery in it. My husband hated The Clock and everyone known to man has taken the batteries out of the clocks I put in bedrooms, so I didn't bother to find a battery for The Clock. I set it to 10.10 and never thought about it again until one day my daughter demanded her daddy fix the clock.

So, he put the batteries in. And he stared at me like it was my fault she wanted to have The Clock working. I feared the noise would keep her up, but she zonked out and stayed that way that night. Pilot Boy also was out for the count, but I lay awake for a long time listening to TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TICK TOCK.

It had been almost ten years since I needed that noise to sleep and having it back was strange. But, since I spent so long with that noise, within days I forgot about it. Now, only on nights when I'm tossing and turning do I realize it's there and I can listen to it to calm down my over active mind.