Horological Meandering

Echi
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The first watch that never was..

It was in the early to mid seventies when I was still a young boy in elementary school.. no more than 7 years old.

I spent the earlier part of my childhood with my grandfather acting as my de facto dad which was weird because my parents and siblings just lived a few minutes away. If I remember the story correctly, there was some sort of sickness in the household and everyone thought it would be a good idea to shield me from it by moving this then baby to my grandparents place. I suppose the oldies liked the idea of having a baby in the house so days turned into months turned into years.

I remember learning to read the time with some sort of fisher price like clock that my gramps would patiently teach me with.

On the eve (or was it a few days before) of my ?th birthday, he pulled out what seemed like a gold/brown plastic box from a cabinet. He opened the box and showed me a digital Texas Instruments watch. He bought it from the US (not a lot of stuff to buy in my home country back then). It was the type that you had to press on a pusher to activate the LED. The time would pop out in red and disappear once depressed. I was psyched. But I remember being told that I was supposed to have it on my birthday. That's my gramps. A grand old horological tease. So back to the cabinet the watch box went. It was surreal to see that type of watch for the first time. I thought it was really cool in a Space 1999 sort of way. I was excited to say the least.

The following day, news broke out of a burglary. I supposewe all slept through it as it was an inside job by the household help. Among the items stolen was my watch. I don't remember what type of replacement gift made up for that loss but I sure can't remember what it was.. I just remember that I almost had a watch.

I wonder if that spurred my interest in watches. Probably.

Thanks for this post. Good to always exercise the mind in retrieving forgotten memories

Best, Echi

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