Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?

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I had to get a new battery for my watch the other day. This required a trip to our preferred local jeweler, who performs this task for a reasonable price while I wait. I value such service these days of self-checking and automated voice prompts.

My Victorinox Swiss Army analog watch is nothing fancy. It tells me the time on a round face, no digital partner, and the calendar date. The date, just the number, is accurate as long as I remember to adjust it in 30-day months and in February. That’s it. There are no additional dials or features. My watch doesn’t tell me how many calories I have burned, how far I walked, or who is sending me a text message – just time and date in a simple, elegant design. The khaki canvas strap is more than a decade old and holding up well. I bought three straps for $15. Two unused ones languish in a study drawer; they may never be used.

The primary reason I am fond of this watch is that it was a gift from my Beautiful Mystery Companion, with advice from daughter Abbie, early in our relationship, roughly 16 years ago. That watch has hung on my left wrist through firings and funerals, moves to other cities in search of jobs, and a return back to East Texas more than a dozen years ago. I only wear my watch to work, when we go out for dinner, or while on road trips. When working out, doing farm work, or hanging around the house, the watch stays parked on the bedside table. I don’t want to scratch the crystal any more than it has already endured through normal use.

My generous peeps more than once have offered to buy me an Apple Watch as a birthday or Christmas gift. Lord knows I am fond of gadgets and gizmos. The only Apple device I don’t own is an Apple Watch. I own an iPhone, iMac, Airbook, two sets of AirPods, and an iPad. (I feel a bit silly seeing it all laid out like this.)

This addiction is not limited to Apple products. One of the gifts I bought for my BMC’s birthday is an indoor/outdoor thermometer. I put the transmitting unit in our greenhouse, which we are still getting ready for house plants. The monitor inside on the kitchen counter now tells us the greenhouse temperature without us having to walk the 100 feet or so to the greenhouse. It is technically a gift to my BMC, but it was my penchant for gadgets that led to its purchase.

Still, I steadfastly refuse to be given or to purchase an Apple Watch. For me, that is taking the ability to stay in constant touch with the outside world – text messages, phone calls, news alerts about what fresh hell is coming out of the Oval Office – a bridge too far. I do not want to be driving down I-20, dodging suicidal (or maybe homicidal) 18-wheeler truck drivers, trying to get to a doctor’s appointment in Dallas without getting smushed like a bug, and my wrist starts buzzing!

It is bad enough when my iPhone, nearly always set to vibrate-only, is in my back pocket while I’m walking and starts buzzing. Worse is when I only think it is buzzing and pull it out only to realize I am imagining the vibration.

This is actually a thing, called phantom vibration syndrome (PVS). A psychology professor at Purdue University Fort Wayne studied this and published a scholarly article several years ago about it. She called it, “technically, a hallucination.”

Great. I’m not about to strap something on my wrist that adds to my already overwrought imagination believing I am receiving a call, message, or news alert. It is bad enough to think the phone is buzzing on my behind when it isn’t.

I will stick to my trusty Swiss Army watch. With a new battery it is good to go for another couple of years. That watch and I have gone up and down a lot of roads together in the past 16 years. Here is hoping for many more for both of us.

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