Alexa, Play My Favorites

A few years ago, my youngest son bought me an Amazon Echo Dot that I installed in my bedroom.

I have to confess it just sat there plugged in and sparsely used for the longest time. It’s main function was to let me know what time it was early in the morning without my opening my eyes: “Alexa, what time is it?”

Then, sometime in early July of this year, my bedroom flat-screen TV acted up and refused to function. I strongly considered buying a new set, but my older son replaced it with an older, mostly unused set from upstairs.

It worked fine. Except there was no on-off timer on the replacement TV. I used to set the timer and the TV would turn itself off after I’d fallen asleep. No more. Many times I’d get up in the middle of the night with the TV screen lighting up the room and the volume seemingly intensified. The cable control used to have the on-off timer, but the new controls don’t offer it.

It got to where I’d just turn the TV off at 9 p.m. like normal people. Of course, many is the time that I fell asleep before 9 p.m. (aging has that effect on many of us oldsters). And sometimes, I wasn’t sleepy at 9 p.m., but turned it off anyway to prevent that.

One night, I decided to ask Alexa to play soothing songs by favorite artists and easy-listening eras and genres. After one of the songs, Alexa suggested I set up a favorites list, which I did, starting with a couple of Carpenters and Anne Murray hits. An order — “Alexa, add this to my favorites list” — was all it took.

As the nights passed, my favorites collection grew and grew — The Carpenters, Anne Murray, Simon and Garfunkel, Bobby Darin, Rod Taylor, The Everly Brothers, Dean Martin, Peter Paul and Mary, Connie Francis, Andy Williams, Roger Whittaker, The Vogues, Michael Bublé ... and more.

One recent morning, I woke up at 1 a.m. I really didn’t feel like turning on the TV and watching HLN’s Morning Express, so asked Alexa to play my favorites, thinking the music would put me back to sleep. Well, that didn’t work. I ended up singing every song in my head. On and on it went, until I’d reached the last song.

It was a little after 4 a.m. Three-plus hours. I didn’t keep track of how many songs are on my favorites list, but most songs are 3-4 minutes long. Three hours equal 180 minutes. Divide that by 3.5 minutes per song (a conservative estimate). I figure there are 50 songs on my list.

And the list will get longer, I guarantee it.