Watches Select

There’s something about the mystique of watches…probably coming from earlier ages when a handcrafted timepiece was enormously expensive and an heirloom to be passed down to future generations. On my 18^th birthday, my grandfather gave me a gold pocketwatch his own father had given him on his birthday. I don’t use it, but it sits on a shelf in my bedroom, and I intend to give it to my son someday.

Some of the more cynical of you might be pointing out the ‘regifting’ aspect of it; a smile crossed my face as the thought crossed my mind.

However, there really is something special about that watch. Not only that, but I still have the first ‘real’ watch I got: a stainless steel Seiko Quartz. I was 13 at the time, and that watch was a symbol of my entrance into adulthood, or at least in my eyes. I was ‘grown up’ at that point. And even though I stopped wearing it years ago, I still keep it around, scuffed faceplate and all.

Think about PULP FICTION, when Bruce Willis goes back and braves mobsters to retrieve his great-grandfather’s gold watch. You have that hilarious (and profane) speech by Christopher Walken talking about how the watch passed from generation to generation, but more than that, the watch stands for something: brotherhood. One man helping out another. In World War II, the watch was delivered from father to son by a man who had never met either. In Vietnam, the watch was delivered by a fellow POW who watched the man die. In both cases, it was a responsibility taken on because they were brothers in arms.

Now, my watches don’t have that kind of weighty significance, but there is something to them. They mean something. The kind of meaning that heirlooms possess, or used to possess: meaning passed down from generation to generation – or even just a reminder of where I used to be in life, the first day I felt like I had arrived in adulthood, whether it was true or not. But that’s the mystique of watches to me: somehow, they seem to carry memories and meaning greater than that of any other objects I own.