the last place it remembers

Have a look at your watch. Is it on your left hand or your right? Does the whole face cover your wrist or just a small circle? Is it fastened tightly or does it rattle around? Do you wear it all the time, in bed, in the shower, so that there is a white band of skin where the sun cannot reach? Or only when you go out? Do you wear your watch like a piece of jewellery, to show off its unique design? Or is it plain and understated? Do you find it annoying when it gets sweaty underneath and feel free and rebellious when you take it off? Maybe you find simple joy in observing the sun in its slow arc across the sky and the small human contact when you ask, “Excuse me, got the time?” But perhaps this makes you feel insecure, naked and overly dependent on others.
Why do you wear a watch anyway? Is it to time your morning jog, or just to keep you moving through the day at the right pace? Is it so you can be on time for your appointments or to get there early so there’s no rushing? What would happen if you were late?

I have two watches. One is digital; it has five countdown timers, a stopwatch with 50-lap memory, dual time zones, seven separate alarms, and a backlit display which is quite useful for telling the time in the cinema or when perhaps you find yourself parachuting into an enemy country at night. The other watch is an analogue. It has two hands and twelve numbers.

Which watch do I like better?

When I wear the digital, my day moves with precision—every segment of time is accounted for, not one starts too early, not one ends too late. I stare at the numbers on the far right, the seconds, their crisp grey pieces—appearing, disappearing—making new numbers as they destroy the old.

I was brought up with digital timepieces; the bedside clock, the microwave, the video and of course the watch on my wrist. I wore that watch everyday. It was a Casio, waterproof to 50 metres. It dominated my wrist like some kind of commando equipment. I would go swimming with it in the summer, not because I needed to know the time but just because it made me feel more rugged and adventurous. After going to the beach there would be white lines in the cracks from the dried-up salt. In the local pool my brother and I would experiment to see how far the alarm could be heard under water. I would submerge and listen to the haunting beep-beeping coming from the other side of the pool. And after I had re-surfaced and given my brother the thumbs-up, I realised then that they hadn’t been lying on that whale documentary: sound does travel further underwater. Later in the life of that watch however, the glass fogged up, the display went blank and even the warm sun on the windowsill couldn’t bring it back to life.

Mum became worried that we kids would never be able to read an analogue clock. We woke one morning to find this plastic circle thing hanging on the kitchen wall. It had a black frame and numbers around the outside and three sticks of different lengths coming out of the middle. The thinnest stick moved in a twitchy way. And when the room was empty and if you sat very still, you could hear it going “tick, tick, tick…” The other sticks didn’t seem to move at all, although every time I came back into the room I could’ve sworn they had changed position.

“I know how to use this,” I thought, “it’s like that thing on Playschool.” When the big hand is on the twelve and the small hand is on the three then you’ve got half an hour to play before Playschool. As I got older I learnt other times too: when the big hand is on the twelve and the small hand is on the six it’s time for “Goodies…goodie, goodie, yum, yum”.

But the legacy of reading only digital timepieces had left its mark. I would stand there in the kitchen looking up at the clock, waiting until mum came along. “What’s the time Mum?” I would ask, knowing she would never tell. And so I was forced to stand there a bit longer, staring, until I had some kind of epiphany or figured out what time it was. (Sometimes I would just turn on the telly, see what was on, and check the time in the TV guide.)

Now, in my adult life, I wear my analogue watch. The hours move like water; not slow, just more flowing. As a teacher—regimented by bells and timetables—I find this both soothing and unsettling. I don’t rush about so much or get flustered if I’m running late. But I do take longer to read the analogue because my mathematical brain still translates it back into the digital read-out. And every once in a while I’ll misread it and get “half-past” mixed up with “o’clock”. When this happens, my students are very pleasantly surprised when I wrap up the lesson thirty minutes before the end.

I going to stick with the analogue though. There’s something about it. It pretends to be still. But those hands, you know they’re moving, watching you as you read the paper over your bowl of Weeties—one coming closer while the other moves away. They’re only hands, there are other parts of the body, but the hands do the touching, the holding. Hands wave goodbye. Hands clench into fists and strike, like an hour in a second.
An analogue watch is both fascinating and frightening because it is a physical representation of time. The numbers are of little consequence; it is not a measuring device like the digital. We can stop time by pulling out the batteries—a digital will go blank—but an analogue holds onto the last place it remembers. And so we relate to the hands. Even when they’re dead. And when they are living we forgive them, because they, like us, get excited and run fast and get tired and slow down. And eventually the little cogs wear out.