New Watch

I have a brand new watch in my pocket. I'm not keeping it on my wrist.

A bit of backstory (cue video montage reel):

I had the same watch from ages 15 to 23. I replaced the band several times. Once, I broke a small edge off of it and repaired the job with superglue. It was a shoddy job, and dried glue remained on the watch for the rest of our time together. Still, I was proud of that dried glue; it was something I had done to help my watch.

The watch was perfect. it was digital (which was a drawback, but not when I was 15), had a leather/cloth band, and was the perfect size for my skinny girl wrists, without actually being a girl's wrist watch.

Then, one week before I left for my internship with Good Morning America, I was wrestling with my nephew. He grappled for my wrist, found my watch, and tore it off. The part where the band attached--that I had glued years earlier--had been shattered.

I was devastated.

Searching for some significance, I told myself the breaking of the watch was a symbolic act, a breaking of my old life in Ohio. I carried the watch around in my pocket, and lost it shortly after I arrived in New York City.

But my old life in Ohio was not broken. I moved back home, and stayed long enough to have my heart broken and take time off to be depressed.

Now I'm working as a summer camp counselor. I have to be a time clock for the kids, telling them when to wake up, eat, and sleep. And I don't have a watch. I'm constantly asking, 'Got the time?" and tapping my wrist. I have a bruise there.

We (that is, me and a car full of Austrailians and Kiwis high on being out of camp) make a midnight trip to Wal-Mart. The watches there are great, because they are only 6 dollars. But I kept looking at them, missing my old watch. I settled on one that is not too big, because I have tiny baby wrists, but also not a woman's timepiece.

It still doesn't feel right. It feels, somehow, like I'm cheationg on my old watch. So it stays in my pocket, and I pull it out when I need to know the time. But its weight is just as obvious next to my thigh as it would be strapped to my wrist.