Timely Advice

Wasn’t 1995 just the best year ever? Well it was to me anyway.

Long before Marty McFly stood mouth agape as this

drove by in Back to the Future (1985) I had always wanted a Toyota 4x4, ever since they came out in 1979 in fact. When I was in high school one of our neighbors had one and I always dreamed that someday I’d get one too and have a pretty girl in the passenger seat and life would be grand.

Well finally in 1995 that dream came true. I actually got the truck in 1994 and then the lovely passenger in the summer of 1995.

...

Sometime in the early fall of 95 the lovely passenger Miss K and I were in the big city for a day of shopping and while in a department store we stopped in the watch section to browse a bit.  I remember my eye being caught by one of these.

I loved the simple elegance and readability of the white face, the classic size and font of the numbers, the leather band and the overall appearance.  At nearly two hundred dollars though it was a bit much and we moved on to the next distraction and all was forgotten, or so I thought.  Christmas that year arrived and the lovely passenger Miss K was much pleased with the earrings I gave her and I was genuinely surprised and of course very happy to receive from her the very same watch that I had admired in the store months before.  I have worn it pretty much every day since.  You can see it in this photo when it is already a year and a half old in the summer of 97.

After fifteen years of daily use though it now looks like this.  (The previous photo is actually of the current version of the same watch and other than the change of placement of the Wenger name it is pretty much identical.)

It does still look fine considering all it's been through but if you click on the picture and view it full size you can see the many little scratches and dings it has suffered.  Of course the original band is long gone. I think I am on my fifth or sixth band and on my third or fourth battery.

The other day at work time really seemed to be dragging.  I kept looking at my watch and it seemed like it hadn't moved at all since the last time I checked it.  Obviously I had been imagining things and must have only hoped in my mind that it showed the same time the last time I checked it as it did now. ( The thought that my indestructible Swiss watch could have indeed stopped dead did not occur to me just yet.)  The third time (being the charm as they say) finally made me realize that time had indeed come to a standstill.  I thought I wasn't quite due for a new battery yet but what ever else could possibly be wrong.

Yesterday after work I took my watch to the mall to get a new battery installed.  The lady at the first store took it into the back but returned with it a couple of minutes later with the unhappy news that they were unable to get the back off and that I should try a shop with someone who had bigger muscles.  The girl at shop #2 was also unable to open the back but agreed to let me try and handed me the watch back taker offer thingy and after a seven second tutorial on how to use it I gave it a go and after adding a few new scratches to my watch's back I managed to open it. She then tested my old battery and to my surprise and shock found that it was still quite alive with plenty of juice left in it.  After fifteen years of impeccable service my watch was finally dead.  She reinserted my original battery and put the back on again but didn't retighten it fully as surely I would be taking it in for repair shortly.

I was in a bit of shock and wasn't quite sure what I would do.  Not sure if I could even afford the repairs it might need I decided to just take it home until I determined what to do.  During the long drive home thoughts of a movie I saw some years ago entered my head.  The boy continued to wear a watch given to him by his long gone father even though it no longer worked. I think it was in The Sixth Sense wasn't it?  

Today just for fun, I looked online at what the world of watches has to offer these days.  I've been out of the watch shopping game for so long I had never realized all the new features that are available nowadays.  There are solar powered watches, watches that reset automatically several times a day when they receive a signal from some place in Colorado.  Wouldn't it be nice to never have to reset your watch because of daylight saving time or because there were only 28, 29 or 30 days this month or because you had to change the battery.  Yes that would be nice.  I always have to pull out the winding stem to... ... ... No way! It couldn't be... do I dare even pick it up and check.

It doesn't look like it's out.  Then again it's really hard to tell just by looking.  I picked it up, put my finger on the crown, closed my eyes and gave it a little push... Click 1. Click 2.  Then tick tick tick, it moved and kept on moving.  Yes, it's alive and very very well thank you and I'm very happy.  Looks like the $10 watch kiosk vendor will have to wait for that extra sale he was about to get.  Even though my Wenger doesn't need a new battery just yet I think it deserves a new band in celebration of it's continued life. After all, it has been nearly fifteen years.

Oh yeah, the timely advice is this.  The next time your non digital watch stops just check to make sure the winding stem hasn't accidentally been pulled out before you go for a new battery or $way to much/hour repairs.  I just wish it had occurred to me sooner.

I’ll have to remember to take it to a DIFFERENT shop to have the back retightened, along with a hastily made up story of “how it somehow just came loose”, in order to avoid the embarrassment of anyone knowing I didn’t even try the winding stem before I took it in for a battery change.