My phone rang just before one o'clock on the morning of December 10.

I could leave it there, just say my phone rang, but it wouldn't convey the actual magnitude of the event.

I once spent seven hundred dollars for an alarm clock. It wasn't an alarm clock when I bought it and it was a lot more than that when I got through with it. The heart of the thing was a World War Two surplus air-raid siren. I added items here and there and, when I was through, it would have given the San Francisco earthquake stiff competition as a means of getting somebody out of bed.

Later, I connected my second telephone to this doomsday machine.

I got the second phone when I found myself jumping every time the first one rang. Only six people at the office knew the number of the new phone, and it solved two problems very neatly. I stopped twitching at the sound of telephone bells, and I never again was awakened by somebody who came to the house to tell me that the alarm had come in, I had been called and failed to answer, and I had been replaced on the go-team.

I'm one of those people who sleep like the dead. Always have; my mother used to tumble me out of bed to get me to school. Even in the Navy, while all around me were losing sleep thinking about the flight deck in the morning, I could stack Z's all night and have to be rousted out by the C.O.

Also, I do drink a bit.

You know how it is. First it's just at parties. Then it's a couple at the end of the day. After the divorce I started drinking alone, because for the first time in my life I was having trouble getting to sleep. And I know that's one of the signs, but it's miles short of alcoholism.

But a pattern had developed of arriving late at the office and I figured I'd better do something about it before somebody higher up did. Tom Stanley recommended counseling, but I think my alarm clock worked just as well. There's always a way to work out your problems if you'll only take a look at them and then do what needs to be done.