Watches

I can't even begin to count how many watches I've had over the years. That isn't because I'm old, but because somehow my wrist and a wristwatch have just never gotten along. Ever since my first wristwatch at the tender age of three, which I managed to smash into a wall only a few hours later while sliding down a park slide, my history with watches has been fraught with danger, drama and lots and lots of breakage.

I have known many fortunate people who buy a watch and then go on to wear it until it wears out or until some of their progeny inherit it.But, for me that is never the case . They break and in much more unpredictable ways. It does not matter if the watch is expensive or dirt cheap. Whether the watch is plastic or metal. Built tough or as delicate as a crystal rose. Once the watch touches my wrist, its days of active life are numbered. And that is no exaggeration.

Sometimes the watches perish in good old fashioned collisions with kitchen cabinets, car doors and pot lids. Often they just seem to give out with their batteries dying, and no amount of new batteries will make the little hands run their race around the clock again. Sometimes more mysterious things happen. A watch melted on my wrist once, with no UFO presence anywhere in sight. A watch was snatched off my wrist in Times Square. Another watch that I had taken off my wrist and set down on the veranda was snatched up by a baffled gull. But no watch that I bought or was given as a gift managed to last more than a month.

Since then I have given up on watches entirely, as they seem to have given up on me. And if no watch will have me, then I won't have them either.