Last week, my brother finally got bitten by the nostalgia bug. He was about to buy a PlayStation on eBay.
“Why?” I asked. “Yours is still in my attic.”

So it was — though it took some finding. Eventually I unearthed it in a travel case, alongside an artifact that genuinely shook me.

The artifact in question? A Super Mario Bros. alarm clock from 1992. Mario looks like he’s been at the mushrooms a little more than usual, and somehow, despite not seeing this thing for at least 20 years, the LED display was still lit.

Back in the day, this clock came with an instruction manual printed in size‑zero font. You practically needed a PhD to set the alarm correctly. More than once, at 2am, it would wake my entire family with the theme from SMB3 and the yell of:
“Wake up — it’s time to leave Dreamland!”

This clock had sat in the attic for two decades, quietly ticking away the seconds, minutes, hours, and days of my life. Once, when that alarm went off, I was at school — and had mistakenly stolen the line guides. (Still sorry, Mr Welton.)

For now, Mario sits in my spare room, perched on top of the Nintendo. Waiting.

Because you never know when it’ll be time to leave Dreamland.