The county’s first-ever Alarm Clock Amnesty Program opened Monday, allowing residents to surrender their guilt over setting a 6:47 a.m. alarm — ‘a time that is neither 6:45 nor 7:00, and therefore a cry for help’ — with no questions asked and no judgment rendered.
‘The 6:47 alarm is the saddest alarm,’ said program director Sheila Vargas, moonlighting from the Microwave Clock Reset Hotline. ‘It’s someone bargaining with the morning. Give me two more minutes than 6:45, but don’t make me admit I need 7:00. We see you. We forgive you.’
The amnesty accepts all forms of alarm-related shame, including the ‘three-alarm cascade’ (6:30, 6:37, 6:44), the ‘phone-across-the-room’ gambit, and the increasingly common ‘alarm labeled DO NOT SNOOZE YOU COWARD.’
Participants receive a certificate of absolution, a pamphlet titled ‘The Morning Is Not Your Enemy (It Just Feels Like It),’ and a complimentary 9-minute snooze token, redeemable during the fall-back’s encore hour.
‘I set my alarm for 6:47 every day for six years,’ confessed resident Dale Pruitt, surrendering his phone at the amnesty table. ‘I have never once gotten up at 6:47. Not once. It’s aspirational. It’s fiction.’
The program runs through November 1, at which point all surrendered guilt will be ‘respectfully composted’ and residents will be issued fresh guilt for the new, darker mornings.
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