Ringtone

I hate my phone. Until I figured out how to change the settings, the default ringtone was "God Bless America," and even now that it's a repeating doorbell sound I can never get the damn thing out of my head. In fact, it's even worse now. The new tone is so simple that I hear it everywhere and think I'm getting a call.

That ring is also the sound for the alarm that wakes me up every morning. For a while, I had to have the alarm really loud, or else the tone would enter my dream. Maybe there would be dogs waiting outside, ringing my doorbell, or maybe I would just keep trying and failing to open the door until I woke up. At some point, my unconscious figured out that the sound meant "time for another day at work," and now it rips me out of my dreams immediately.

So when I hear similar sounds around the city, I feel an immediate urge to turn them off. It's almost painful, and it rips me from any thought I'm having back to memories of grogginess and confusion. Once, I heard the doorbell sound when I was coming home from work, and it reset my internal clock. I was up until three or four that night, and I overslept the next morning when my alarm didn't wake me up.

I was thinking of changing the alarm tone, but it'll be such a drag having a new sound infiltrate my dreams every morning.