Does anybody really care what time it is?
How accurate is your wrist watch? Does it matter, really?
There are too many clocks in our lives. I’d gladly slip back into an existence that used a sundial for sunny afternoons and a big dose of “hungry feeling” or “sleepy feeling” to coordinate the rest of my personal schedule. Sadly, the various PDA and Outlook Calendar widgets don’t handle subjectivity in a reasonable (and timely) manner.
I carry a watch. Purchased for about $10 at a local Radio Shack, it is digital and gives me accuracy to within a few seconds a month. Not to brag, but I do arrive at the bus stop BEFORE the bus, five days out of five. At the end of any given workday, I check the time on my desktop, my telephone, my wall clock and this pocket timepiece; if all are within the hour, I feel justified in packing my bag and leaving a slipstream behind me.
The pocket watch has started to molt. What appeared to be a solid metal body is now a formed piece of brown-grey plastic with peeling foil. I guess I’m going to have to concede that my watch doesn’t have one of those “solid stainless steel bodies” so vaunted by the Rolex people. Ditto for the mysterious bezel.
I’ve seen inside my watch. Once you remove the tiny tiny tiny screws that keep things together, there isn’t much substance beyond a cheap fuel cell (battery for those who want to use simpler terms) and some electronic goo. Which begs the question: should I start dreaming about one of those fancy chronometers certified to depths of 300 meters, or should I accept that spending a year’s salary on something clunky for my wrist would be certifiably silly?
