Watches

Watches are symbols of so much that I love and hate.  They stand for that darned American ethos of punctuality.  Time is money.  "I'll meet you at 10:15 a.m." instead of "I'll meet you in the morning."  Luxury watches stand for excess, waste, superfluity, and confused values.  But they're also really neat.  They stand for precision and craftsmanship, for ingenuity and creativity and beauty.  They're tiny miracles you can wear on your wrist.  Even the precision and reliability of a $5 digital watch is practically beyond comprehension.  Wristwatches are engines of awe.  And they're sources of comfort.  Not only because they let you relax when you're running early, but because they are your constant companion, a reassuring familiarity in the midst of the unknown that life brings each day.  When I was a child I had many digital watches, including one that played something like twelve different alarms, one of which was Dixie.  I bought it from a mail-order advertisement in a newspaper, and loved fooling with its many functions.  I remember a brief trend around that time of people wearing two, three, or more watches on their arms, just for fashion's sake.  This was probably the same time that Flava-Flav opted for a slightly more prominent timepiece.  For years I wore analog watches, finally retiring my last one for everyday wear because it was too heavy, and because the child in me longed for the comforting beeps and boops of a digital watch.  That's what I've got now, and it's on that watch that I press the snooze button every morning when the alarm goes off, hoping to buy myself just a little more time.