Do you know of those grandfather clocks that chime every 15 minutes? Most people like those things, but I cannot say that I’m a fan of them.

There was one in the house where I grew up, and I cannot tell you how much sleep I lost over it.  It’s not because it chimed every 15 minutes, it’s because of what happened in between those chimes.  My partner has one of these clocks, and at first I was really worried that my insomnia over the clock would happen again, but so far it”s been fine!

My bedroom was upstairs in the house, and the clock was right at the bottom of the stairs.  It was a fairly large, fairly loud wall-mounted variety with the three big weights hanging down.  So every 15 minutes it would rattle the walls with its stupid chiming, but after a while you kind of block it out and you don”t even realize it’s making any noise.  But when I would go to sleep it was a different story.  I’d be almost asleep and I’d hear a single “DING!” that would wake me up.  Why did the clock just make one sound like that?  Then it would make two “DING DONG!”, then three, then four, then five, then before long there we constant discordant chimes all going at the same time like some insane little kid was banging away on a musical instrument.  I”d get up, open the door, and head for the stairs… but when I”d get to the top of the stairs it would be silent.  No more noise. 

I couldn’t really open up to my mother about such a thing, but I did ask her if she ever heard the clocking making random noises.  No.  The clock didn’t do this all the time, but it was often enough to where it was tormenting me.