Watch

I don’t know when I first started wearing a wristwatch. I probably sported a prototype or toy model (Mickey Mouse?) when I was very young, 50 or so years ago, and it probably wasn’t functional. I may have worn one in high school though I have no photographic evidence. In all likelihood I wore one by the time I started college; the first photo that I have with a watch on my wrist is when I was 19 or 20. And as far as I can recall I’ve worn a wristwatch (left arm, face up) for the past 40 years. Well, except for a few months during my first semester as a graduate student in theater when I adopted the affectation of a pocket watch inherited from my grandfather. (Pocket watches are not intended for jeans, so that experiment did not last long.)

But in a recent convergence of technological and professional circumstances, I’ve pretty much stopped wearing my wristwatch altogether. First, the technological. I only discovered a few months ago that I have to make a concerted effort to find myself somewhere without a clock in easy proximity. We have two in our living room (radio and TV; four if you include the two laptops); four in the kitchen (coffee maker, oven, microwave, and a wall clock (though it hasn’t had the correct time for probably a decade)); two in our bedroom (both alarm clocks); one in the bathroom (a wall clock); one in my study (a camera); and one in my wife’s study (an alarm clock). But I never wore my wristwatch inside anyway, for just that reason. Yet for years I would wear it out in public, despite my having a clock on the dash of my car for at least the last 26 years, clocks on signs outside banks, clocks in most businesses (with the exception of the kindred enterprises of shopping malls and casinos which don’t want you to know how long you’ve been dropping cash). And then last year I finally entered the 21st century and got my first cellphone, an iPhone that first displays, upon pushing the Home button, the date and time (as well as a photo of my granddaughter). What did I need a wristwatch for? Was it just habit?

This is where the professional comes in. When I first went to school, especially college, clocks were not at all as ubiquitous as they have been for the past 30 years, especially the last 20 or 10 years. No doubt I needed a watch to insure my getting to class on time, as student and, later, as teacher. And despite as more and more clocks started turning up on campus — in classrooms, halls, and offices (and in the past 20 years on computers in all those places) — I continued my habit of wearing my watch. But when I retired two months ago, all of the above gradually began to sink in: Just what did I need my wristwatch for?

So for the past two months, I’ve rarely worn my watch, except when I’ve gone out fishing or hiking, where I don’t have ready access to my cellphone/timepiece (nor want it). It may not be long before I’m completely free of the need for it. And that’s not a bad thing. But it does seem a marker of time, of age. I can imagine that there are people (many? most? all?) under 20 — maybe under 30 — who have never owned a wristwatch. But then why should they? They probably have never owned a buggy whip either. Or a slide rule. Or a typewriter. . . . But I could go on.