MY CLOCK RADIO
Picture 1981. A newly married couple actually move in together after they get married (perhaps the first couple to do so in the 1980’s). Each had a college vintage alarm clock – no radio. In the spirit of reinventing their lives, they go to a chain called Caldor (very much a ur Wal Mart – huge for its day, but quaintly small by today’s Big Box standards). Cruising through the aisles, the young man’s eyes alight upon something he has never seen before – a clock radio with only two knobs on it. One is for tuning the radio and one is for volume control. The most amazing aspect is that on the top of this relatively normal faux wood grained plastic box is an undifferentiated key pad with numbers and words surrounded by round-edged rectangles of printing – no buttons, no switches, no dials. It appears that this $19.95 marvel is literally from the 21st Century (at that time, a lifetime away). On closer examination, this high-tech box took on even more startling importance. Believe it or not, this clock radio had two alarm times. This was unprecedented. In both of this married couples’ families, Dad had set the alarm for his time to wake up. Mom often woke up earlier by habit, but only one wakeup time mattered – his. Here, embodied in all of its 1981 mass-marketed beauty was a piece of day-to-day life that combined high-tech invention with social progress – a feminist techno dream! Two alarms accessed by a touch pad! If someone wanted to wake up to a buzzer, that could be arranged. The second alarm could be a radio station. The choices seemed almost unending compared to what had been available.
The reality of this box, of course, paled in comparison to its promise. One of the two knobs immediately broke upon use (volume had to be adjusted either by strong fingernails or extreme pressure from your fattest finger. The clock radio literally had to be lifted and put in front of your eyes to adjust the time because the buttons were placed on the top of the unit versus its face. Having said that, its 23-year history has survived several moves, two children, being dropped in late night/early morning frenzies to turn off alarms and in the usual grotesque psychodynamics of realizing that you had set the alarm for p.m. versus a.m. and thus missed an all-important wake up time to meet some client somewhere.
When we discovered this marvel we were a two-income couple, a true DINK reality (double income, no kids). We are now a classic workaholic Dad and part-time work Mom with two teenage boys whose schedules are at least as complicated as ours. The complexity of today has absolutely nothing to do with the perceived Utopian control that this Toshiba clock radio promised us – and that’s not a bad thing.
