Backstory: In high school, I had a lot of trouble getting up in the morning. I’m a legendary sleeper, and I regularly slept through whatever extra-loud alarm clock I was testing out that month, even when it was going off inches from my face. (In college, I even slept through a fire alarm in my fraternity house. It, too, was inches from my face.) I also have the extraordinary ability to get out of bed, walk across the room, snooze a sounding alarm, and get back in bed, all without waking up or having any recollection of any of it happening at all. (In college, also in my fraternity house, I was once found vacuuming the downstairs living room—my weekly chore—at 1am in nothing but my boxers. I have no memory of this; I was asleep.)

What did work to wake me up, though, was people screaming my name at the top of their lungs. Hiring assistants to yell at me every morning is not very sustainable, so for Christmas one year, my mom bought me perhaps the best and most life-altering gift I’ve ever received: a voice-recordable alarm clock, into which people could scream my name repeatedly, rather than having to scream into my ears every morning. I’ve used it, or some variation of it, basically every day since. The original has long since petered out, though it lasted well into medical school; I’m now using my iPhone to blare my own name, much to my wife’s chagrin.

Behold:
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