My alarm clock....has died.

My friend these last 15 years, faithful and dependable, asking only a plug from which to suckle his life's milk of electricity, is no more.

Let me say a few words: Pal...you've been with me through thick and thin. At the house in the subdivision, and then the house in the woods. In the dorm at Gracy Hall. In the apartment. There've been good times. Remember 1989, when the Cubs made the playoffs? There've been bad times...remember our fight when I thought you ate my egg sandwich? We didn't talk for days, but we worked through it. Like friends do.

I hope up in alarm clock heaven he will forgive me.

Forgive me? Whatever could Big Stupid Tommy have done?

I hope he forgives me for dropping him last night when I was setting his alarm to wake me this morning. He fell from my hands, hit the corner of the night stand. He looked okay, except for the dent on his clock radio's speaker. When I asked, "Plastic Man (for that was his name), are you alright?" he answered with his customary, stoic silence. I smiled, but when I awoke in the middle of the last night, my bladder full to the brim, it was, according to my friend, 14:81. Since we have no hours here on Earth in excess of 81 minutes, and I didn't live on military time (that I'm aware of), I knew that his brain had been hopelessly scrambled.

I woke up with the sun this morning. I stared at my clock. I looked at my watch, knew that Plastic Man was to raise the alarum using the Bob and Tom Radio Network at 6:35. Alas, 18:88 passed without incident, as did the next 18:88. 18:89 came, and there was the briefest burst of static, but just that. And nothing more.

I said a few words this morning, wondering all the while if alarm clocks have souls. The lens fell out of the right socket of my eyeglasses. I take that as a sign from the Lord: Yes, alarm clocks have souls, now go to work!

Or maybe it was the Ghost of my Alarm Clock! Maybe it was Plastic Man who unscrewed the right lens!

If it was, don't do it again. Do you understand the ironic, vicious circle that is not being able to see to fix the thing that helps you see?

That makes me happy, that his spirit is with me. That means that my grandmother, our Pomeranian Mitsy and my Alarm Clock Plastic Man are with me at all times. It is also a little troubling, because Mitsy never liked me and was always trying to bite my little fingers and face.

Visitation will be held at my apartment next to the trash can in my bedroom, for as long as that particular bag stays in that particular trashcan. A Memorial service will be held at the opening of baseball season. In lieu of flowers, send money to Big Stupid Tommy, so that he might memorialize Plastic Man at Wrigley Field.

It's what Plastic Man would have wanted.

Thanks, Buddy. And God Bless.

Plastic Man, the Alarm Clock
(1986-2003)