Watch me

I bought Wife a watch for Christmas because she didn’t have one but also because I like watches myself. The only problem with buying a watch is probably that once I find one that I really like, I realize that I like my money even better but when I was buying that watch for her, I figured that she was paying half of it anyway.

Just kidding.

Only the best is good enough for her. And I found one that she likes “a lot,” as she just told me in a chat window.

Time!

But myself? I haven’t worn a watch regularly since about 2002. The last time I bought a watch for myself was in 2000 when Wife and I were in New York’s Niketown. I fell in love with a red Nike sports watch, but again, decided to not buy it. It was kind of expensive. Besides, I already had a Nike watch, the one that I had bought just three weeks earlier when we first came to New York, but before we embarked on our road trip across America.

We had walked through Chinatown, looking for bargains – and we found one. A beautiful, silver Nike watch, with a rotating compass-looking outer rim, and a gorgeous digital display, with huge numbers. Wife managed to haggle a couple of bucks off the 15-dollar price, so I bought it.

Half an hour later, the numbers on that cool compass-like part were all smudged, half of them invisible to the human eye, but the clock worked. Another few weeks. It was a little slow.

Back in New York, Wife saw the tear in the corner of my eye as I said goodbye to the red sports watch, so she sent me back to Niketown about a half an hour before we had to go to the airport. I sprinted – it was a sports watch – to the store, and bought it.

That red watch replaced a cool Storm watch I had bought with my first Swedish paycheck in 1998. The watch that looked like a blue jewel, that couldn’t be used for telling the time after dark – it wasn’t backlit – and that had a rotating clock face (my idea!) and a secret mirror under it for the spy in me (not my idea).

Before that, I hadn’t bought a watch since 1991, when I was in London for a couple of weeks, forging taxi receipts – a story that will be told later so bookmark this page – and trying to move a product.

Anyway, the day before I flew out, I got rid of my remaining cash – as is the tradition – and bought the following items: a Mickey Mouse tie, a purple vest, and a red Mickey Mouse watch where Mickey’s arms moved. (A gentleman’s attire). That watch broke in 1994 when I whitewashed a wall in downtown Helsinki so that the NHL commissioner wouldn’t have to see an ugly graffiti. We, a friend and I, had to be quick, and we had to move fast, and I forgot that I was wearing the Mickey watch.

Fortunately for me, when Storm broke, I had just got a Phantom watch as a subscription present. “The man who can’t be killed” watch has been my default one – since the wristband of the Suunto sports watch that Dad gave me snapped into two pieces – which I think is amazing, considering it’s ten years old.

It still ticks, but only barely, and it doesn’t tell the time accurately anymore. It’s probably right on time, but the hour hand has moved just a little bit so that instead of showing exactly at three (when it’s 3), it’s pointing somewhere about two thirds of the distance between 2 and 3.

In other words, I’m down to my last backup watch, which is also my most valuable – in every sense of the word – one. In the fall of 1991, I sat in the Helsinki Business School’s big auditorium, waiting to get my diploma. Four years hardish work had paid off, and I was a university graduate, ready to take on the recession. And the world.

I sat in the fourth row, listening to the speeches, every once in a while glancing back to the door, to see if I could see Dad somewhere. He was supposed to drive to Helsinki for the event, but he hadn’t made it before it began.

I still hadn’t seen him when they called my name. I got up, walked to the stage, shook hands with the principal, got my diploma, and walked out the other way, all the while craning my neck, trying to see if Dad had made it.

With no luck.

I walked out of the auditorium a half hour later, with the diploma in my hand, disappointed and worried. And then I saw Dad.

“I just made it, I was in the back,” he said, and took off his watch. “This is for you. It’s a great watch. Expensive, too.”

“Hope you like it. Congratulations, you college graduate you,” he added.

I did, and do like it. But I think it’s time to buy a new one.

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