Outsmarted

Remember how cats in cartoons used to wake up when startled out of their sleep? You ought to see my ceiling after years of beeping alarm clocks and clock radios.

My solution: the all-in-one Smart alarm clock with 23 soothing nature sounds to choose from, along with a warm 10-color LED sunrise simulator.

I set it last night for 5 a.m. and drifted asleep in anticipation of waking to a soothing waterfall in the Amazon rainforest.

Sometime during the course of the night, my Smart clock decided to convert to military time, just in case I needed to brush up on my basic math every time I got up to pee.

Of course, one doesn’t understand military time when one snaps awake at fifteen hundred-something hours. Bleary-eyed, I squinted at the clock, registered it as 5:23, rolled out of bed, stumbled wearily throughout the house and slammed down a cup of coffee before discovering it was actually 3:37 a.m.

(But 15 hundred hours is in fact 3 p.m., not a.m., you say? I didn’t figure that out until many hours later.)

When your Smart technology outsmarts you before you even get out of bed in the morning, it’s best just to call it a day.

I’m not asking for much.

Of all my God-given rights, the one I exercise most frequently is running errands without combing my hair or putting on makeup. Before each occasion, I throw on a scrunchie, grab my grocery bags and keep my eye on the prize: completing my shopping free from familiar faces, conversation and eye contact.

I don’t believe I’m the only one. Retailers have answered our quest to end human interaction with the self-service checkout. While my more socially-conscious friends will remind me that robot cashiers take away jobs from humans, I welcome them.

I have but one complaint.

Big Y, either lose the video camera with my zoomed-in face on the screen, or dim the fluorescent lights. It’s your choice.