Along with the calendars I mentioned last month, late summer brought us an avalanche of Hoiday Gift Catalogs. I love catalogues. They remind me of my mother looking forward to the Sears catalogue and scrolling through it with her, even the pages of refrigerators. Mom also arrived at overnight camp on visiting day, armed with Mademoselle and Calling All Girls magazines. We would look at the fall clothing and zero in on a few things I might like. The sweater sets were a must. They were so classic. Their time had come, and they would last forever.
Every cataloque I receive now has a watch or two. Watches, all over, as if we could not get through another year without a new one. We may have limited time and resources to shop, but the right gift and the right moment may be right there in our hands.
Time has always been on our minds and our hands both literally and fiqureatively.
What kind of time-piece was Wally wearing, when she exclaimed,
“Come on, We’re burning daylight!”, after a slight delay in the rocket launching countdown. She is the 80-some-year-old woman who went up eagerly in the New Shepard Space Capsule with Jeff Bezos. Do we have a need to stare time in the face like that? It could be threatening.
What is it with fashion watches? Is it spare time on our hands to toy with, or a required unnecessary ornament. Why do we need more than one or possibly two watches? If we have more than two, does that give us more time to live? Is the time any grander if we wear the expensive watch. Will we have more fun? I see you strutting just thinking about it.
Anthropologists seem to recognize a basic atavistic need to capture our being with a personal object that we carry with us. A small stone, a dented locket, a dried flower; every one of us has picked up some inanimate thing and held it close and called it ours. We give it magic powers. Many are watches. They sit on shelves or reside in boxes or the back of dusty dresser drawers, maintaining their assigned energy. After we are gone our kids will pick it up and ponder, “why on earth did Mom hang on to this.” It has occurred throughout the ages, one generation looking askance at the last generations cache.
But we wear watches, and they do tend to pile up. In addition to getting us to work on “time”, they slyly show off our social position. They are an indicator of our personal style and in some cases, our wealth.
Purveyors promise to gift wrap, and if you buy two or more you get a 10% discount. They pitch them as an icon we have to have…..apparently, each season, we need to recalculate our situation, so say the merchants, as they push the huge round face on us over last season’s more diminutive yet still large ungainly shape. I have one, I should know.
Once I saw 27 Watches advertised, literally splashing their faces all over the front section of the Times, pardon the pun, larger than life. Sure it was pre Christmas, pardon the politically incorrect word, and watches are a safe gift; they will fit anyone, usually come in a box, and are better received than the surprise in the crackerjack package.
Does one “good watch” (read that expensive) tell time any better than one bought at the ‘flea”? Will you walk taller and smile broader? Probably yes.
Does the one your father wore, that sits in your locked desk, bring him closer? Probably yes to that one also.
Of course there are serious watch collectors, who know the history and aesthetics of timepieces, their mechanisms and their place in history. They have wonderful names and interesting histories, and do incredible things. I just learned, courtesy of Wikipedia, it was the Germans in battle in the late 19th century that mandated the army wear ‘wrist watches’. They wanted to, “Get me to the war on time; co-ordinate those battles men….do not leave time and destruction to chance.” The Chronographs, the Repeaters, the Skeletons, the this, the that……..the ones that dive deep, the ones that cross zones….bells and whistles, stops and starts. There is an endless choice of colors and materials, straps and bands, chains and bracelets….analog, digital and best of all The Mickey. Its always timely.
