Snooze Button

Published in the Desert Valley Times
July 26, 2005

Has there ever been an invention as wondrous as the snooze button?
You know, the little device on most modern alarm clocks that you can hit which shuts off that beep/buzz/wah/annoying FM DJ which is intended to wake you up in the morning, and gives you an extra 10 minutes of sleep.
There you are, in the arms of Farrah Fawcett (the 1976 “Charlies Angels” version, not the 2005 “my plastic surgeon is an incompetent quack” version), when your alarm clock reminds you it’s time to get up and prepare for your day of counting rectal thermometers at the Quickie Mart.
You roll over, hit the snooze button, and then try to return to where you left off in the dream.
Of course, by the time you get back to slumber land, you’re in the arms of “Survivor” winner Richard Hatch.
This time, you’re grateful for that blaring alarm clock.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if inventors could come up with a way to use the snooze button in other parts of your life?
Like most technological innovations, kids would be the first to make it wildly popular.
Homework not done?
Hit the snooze button and buy yourself another day.
Unprepared for tomorrow’s big test on the Pythagorean Theorem?
Whack that old snooze button and put it off for a week.
And, like the alarm clock device, you could hit the button eight or nine times, ensuring that you graduate before that test actually gets taken.
For adults, the benefits would be endless.
Big report due in the morning?
A snooze button would come in handy.
Bar getting ready to close while you still have a quarter-ounce of sobriety left?
Press that snooze button.
(Although you may be seeing three or four of them by this time…just aim for the one in the middle.)
Housewives facing the daunting prospect of cleaning the oven after last night’s cheese and spaghetti sauce souffle’ disaster could press a button and put it off for another meal or two.
(Of course, with as many tasks as amazing housewives have each day compared to normal humans, their collection of snooze buttons would resemble the console of a NASA space mission at Houston control.)
Construction project not finished that you promised a month ago?
Snooze button to the rescue!
(Actually, I believe that contractors have already invented a snooze button. They call it “two more weeks.”)
And as yours truly could attest, they would be invaluable to sports writers and journalists in general.
Facing a deadline on the varsity marble championships?
Hit that button and go back to watching John Wayne in “Hellfighters.”
(Some people might argue that the VCR has a “pause” button, but they don’t understand that a man must have his priorities in order.)
I’m sure that some enterprising young Bill Gates in the future will come up with a real-life snooze button.
Until then, man will simply have to make do with the tools currently used to keep deadlines at bay:
Excuses and alibis.
Now, if you’ll pardon me, Chance is getting ready to blow out that poison oil well fire in Malaya.
And somewhere, Farrah is still waiting.