Benton Courier - HOLLENBECK: Timepieces, spouses

Husbands and watches have a lot in common: Both do as they please.
   Stay with me here. I can back up what I say.
   Some people have a penchant for losing things and I happen to be one of them. Particularly such things as car keys and wrist watches.
   I have a record for losing watches or breaking them.
   One Christmas season my spouse asked if I’d like a new watch as a present.
   “Heavens, no,” I answered. “You know I’d just lose it and then you’d feel bad. I’d rather pick out my own watches and then I won’t feel guilty if I lose them.”
   Ed’s given me several watches through the years. Most are history, including two that were lost in rapid succession. Somebody might suspect I really didn’t like them and was ditching them deliberately so that I didn’t have to wear them.
   Not so. I picked out the second one myself, and the first one, which Ed selected all by himself, was gorgeous. Neither left my wrist on purpose.
   Both vanished while I was wearing them, so I blamed the losses on faulty catches or evil elves or high winds caused by swarms of killer bees.
   I lost one without even realizing it until an employee of a local veterinary clinic called to tell me one of the doctors had found it in the drain of a sink.
   I immediately knew what had happened, though I had been unaware of it at the time. I had been at the clinic to visit a sick cat. Before leaving, I washed my hands and apparently the watch fell off during the process.
   I never heard a clunk, nor did I feel the watch slip off my wrist. Apparently, I thought it still in place when I took off rings and other jewelry at the end of the day.
The next morning I looked for it before coming to work and couldn’t find it, so I assumed it was hiding amidst the abundance of baubles, bangles and bright, shiny beads that live in one of my jewelry drawers.
   The amazing thing is that the watch stayed overnight in the wet drain and never stopped running. I had purchased it from a woman who came into the newspaper office to take out a classified ad for a yard sale. As a sort of pre-sale gimmick, she had brought in a box of jewelry she was hawking to entice us to come to the sale.
   I bought the watch for $10. This was several years ago, and it still runs.
   I was a grown-up woman before I realized I have the kind of metabolism that necessitates anti-magnetic timepieces. And I had put some really nice watches out of commission by then, including one platinum diamond-studded one from an over-zealous suitor of many years gone by.
   There’s something about my body’s magnetism that freezes the workings of a watch, causing it to stop short, never to run again, but thankfully, no old man has died that I know of. (Just couldn’t resist that.)
   My spouse blames the problem on the fact that I’m a redhead and I see no need to argue the point.
   My all-time favorite timepiece is the old-fashioned chain watch Ed gave me the day we married. I have managed to hold onto it and treasure it for sentimental as well as aesthetic reasons. But even while wearing it, I still have to put a watch on my left wrist or I feel I’m leaning too much toward nudity.
   This custom is so ingrained in me that I’ve gone so far as to wear watches that were known not to work in order to feel fully dressed. Old habits die hard.
   Following a serious illness some time back, Ed came into the house carrying a gift-wrapped package. He asked me to stop whatever I was doing because he wanted to show me something.
   Ever the dutiful wife (?!), I complied. He handed me the present.
   “What’s this for?” I asked.
   “It’s for taking care of me when I was sick,” he said.
   After muttering the “you shouldn’t have” kind of remarks women are wont to do, I opened the package and saw a wrist watch — a wide, silver bracelet-style one that was quite attractive. But remember, I told him not to do it. And in true character, he paid absolutely no attention to what I said about not giving me something I might lose.
   To reiterate, husbands and watches are a lot alike. Both do exactly as they please.
   But some — like mine — really are worth keeping.

   Lynda Hollenbeck is associate editor of the Courier.
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