My time

I like watches. I don't collect them, nor have I spent loads of money on one. My current watch was a gift to myself last year, $500 worth of Nixon. But I do covet many others.

In a previous post, I described a time in my teens about how I'd been disappointed with my Grandmother, for not buying me a watch for my 16th birthday. Obviously, though in hindsight after this post, my interest in watches probably comes from this event. For those not interested in going back to the other post, the story goes that when my sister was 16, my Grandmother bought her a watch. At the time, she said it was a tradition in her family to give a watch as a gift on the 16th birthday. I remembered this and was looking forward to this coming up to my birthday. It never came. My father, no doubt feeling that he had to make up for it, bought me a watch - thanks - but it was a bit lame.

So in a seemingly random coincidence, tonight I was thinking about memory, and how the workings of memory is more about reconstruction than recall. I think it's a great topic to blog about but that's for another time. Then I thought about; what are my worst memories (another post for another time), and one thing that came to mind was the time I was told about my Grandfathers passing. One thing I distinctly recall (or reconstruct!) about this time was that I had bought my girlfriend (K, now my wife) a watch for her birthday and I had to pick it up from the jeweller. Since I had to run off to see my family then I'd miss her birthday and wouldn't be fair on her. So I dropped what I was doing, left work, went straight to the jeweller to get the watch, and went to see K to give her the watch for her birthday. And then I burst into tears.

So isn't that some weird shit?

By the way, it's K's birthday today. Maybe it's not a coincidence that I was thinking about memory after all. Happy Birthday my sweet.