When my family toured Washington, D.C., in 1964, we stayed in a Holiday Inn where one of the beds was equipped with something called "Magic Fingers." My brother and I scraped together two quarters and shoved them into the sliding arm that dropped the coins into a metal box above the headboard, and the entire bed started vibrating. At the time it seemed like one of the silliest things I'd ever seen, and the memory of it has only gotten more ridiculous with time. That's probably why I've had an aversion to the various bed shakers that I've heard are effective alarms for hearing-impaired people. Last night I took a quick overnight trip to Connecticut to visit a prospective client and had to get up early this morning. A front-desk wake-up call doesn't work for me because I can't hear the ringer without my hearing aids. So my drill is to set the radio alarm clock with the volume turned up as loud as it will go and drag it onto the bed next to my head. Then if I make sure to sleep on my bad ear, my good ear hears the racket and I wake up when the radio starts blaring. But if I end up sleeping on my good ear, I don't hear it (though I pity the poor person in the room next door). The result is I end up getting a lousy night's sleep because I wake up every 15 minutes worried that I've turned onto the good ear. So I guess it's time to break down my resistance to the portable vibrating bed shakers that I know are out there. But right now I'm too tired to go on the web and wade through a hundred different possibilities. Does anyone have a suggestion? I've put up a picture of the Shake Awake product that seems to come up on a lot of hearing-assistance e-commerce sites -- it's kind of ugly but in a Darth Vaderish sort of way, plus it's got a catchy name, so maybe it's a good choice. I don't know. I'm too tired to tell right now. I'll let you know what I buy after I do some real research. In the meantime, if you've got one that works for you, let me know.
Posted by David at 04:21 PM on May 23, 2005 in NEW PRODUCTS
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