A watched stop never runs

In which our Hero wants to count the seconds but doesn’t know who’s first

Sometimes I’m very glad that I’m not superstitious. Because if I was, I think I’d be obligated to freak out about the ominous fact that my solar powered watch died just before my 40th birthday. I’d have been feeling anxious about what else was going to give out, and thinking about endings, and generally sinking into a dire mood about my progress towards middle age.

But as a sane, rational man of little superstition and much reason, my first reaction was to spend the day not noticing that it had been 10:45 in the morning until it was time to go home and I realized that there was a reason quitting time wasn’t coming any closer. My second reaction, though, was my heart sinking. I’ve actually been looking for a replacement watch for a number of years and I can’t find the answer. I love my watch, but in an impulse that is kindred to Christian Bale’s American Psycho obsession with business cards, I want my watch to be unique, distinctive and a signature. I want my watch to say, I am cool and individual with my factory produced accessory and if you disagree, we will discuss this accompanied by a chainsaw.

Except that the thing about accessories is that wearing them is by default a recommendation, so a few years ago my former manager cheerfully pointed out, “Look, I got the same watch as you!” Dammit. Not that I should entirely be surprised, but given the range of watches out there, the populations of people, you’d think it’d be more unlikely.

Then again, somewhat like my fountain pen, my watch wears into me. It stops being store bought and starts carrying the scars of my life, just like my skin. Less distinguished and individually storied, certainly, but still, after a decade of looking past the 7-to-1:30 groove in the crystal, it’s part of the face, part of what makes my watch mine and not, say, my bosses.

Got a button fixed, and along the way, they changed out my crystal. A year later and I still look at my watch expecting to see the scar that’s not there. They’ve changed something about my watch, but it’s better, because now the watch face is like the clear waters over a mechanical reef, and I can look in and see to the bottom, see the details.

Watches aren’t fashionable now, people check time on their phones. Heck, my *dad* checks time on his phone, same as the kids do. Except I’ve never been fashionable, and I’m way more polite and subtle when I glance at my wrist than when someone else pulls out their phone, finds the power button, turns on the screen and then puts it all away. Eventually the people trying to put displays on our wrists will figure it out. My own expectation is that the new watches will be like the pebble, low-powered color epaper displays that integrate to our phones and our clouds and make my machine antiquated. I certainly don’t expect to pass it on to anybody, it’s no pocket watch and it’s no heirloom.

But when it died, I took it off and put it on my desk. And over the last few weeks since it’s died, I keep finding it on my wrist. I don’t remember putting it on, I don’t remember wearing it. I just know that my wrist feels right with that weight, and my reflexes just seem to draw it into its place without any conscious thought.

I’ve left it off for stretches of time, trying to see if it would wake up with some regular daylight. But it’s been weeks of grey days and in the end, it still fails to respond.

So my watch died, and I’ve been shopping for a new one. Well, actually, I’ve been shopping for a few years, anticipating my birthday and the wear on the watch. I’ve been trying to pick out a new watch to wear for at least the next decade. Searching but not finding. My watch has a big brother, that I just couldn’t justify at the time. A generation of the technology later, big brother is remarkable, and my likely candidate for a replacement. But I don’t love it the way I did this one.

The watches that I find to love are spectacular works of engineering and design. Tourbillons and gears and crystals and metals. But I can’t find it in me to spend so much for a watch, even after giving myself a budget that technically has room for a used car. They’re so pretty, but they’re not me.

I may just take it in for a repair.

After writing this entry, I picked up my watch again and started to fiddle with dials. And suddenly the digital display lit up with zeroes, which is the first sign of life I’d seen in a month. So some more googling lead me to discover the existence of The Zero Position Reset Procedure, where a combination of modes and button presses would kick the watch back into midnight GMT time, and then allow you to manipulate the various hands on the dial back to their respective zeros.

So then I set the time, and pushed in the crown and… the second hand started to tick. Just like that my watch was back. All back, except for the custom timezone I defined for Toronto when I got it so long ago.

It sounds so small, I figured out how to reset my watch. But as much as my watch is a material object that I shouldn’t have any emotional attachment to… it’s my watch. I was grieving the possibility of giving it up, and then I got it back from the dead. And I’ve been glancing down at it every so often, since, watching the second hand sweep with the same quiet pleasure as I got watching my mother breathe as she napped after I brought her back from Houston with a possible heart problem.

Sometimes I hate that i’m not superstitious. Because if I was, there would probably be some profound comfort to be found in the fact that around the time I turned forty, my watch came back from the dead to start a whole new life.