The Magic Watch

I’ve always wanted a nice digital watch with a timer for running. The problem is, I’m cheap and hate spending the idea of spending too much money on a plastic watch. Thus I find myself with Target watch #3. At this point I realize that I could have owned a much nicer one for the same price. The irony is not lost on me.

When I first got the watch, I purposely did not set an alarm of any kind. 1) Because I will inevitably lose or toss the directions and 2) once set, the likelihood of me being able to turn it off is slim to none. Little did I know it at the time, but I bought a magic watch.

One day, the alarm started going off at 10am. I have no idea how this started happening, thus the idea that my watch must be magic. It drove me nuts. Enter boy #1. Boy #1, who at this time was still in the trying to impress me phase, insisted that he could get the alarm turned off and all would be well. After fiddling with the darn thing for what felt like ever, he assured me that all was well and the watch would never make a peep again unless I wanted it to. Thirty minutes later, I was laughing so hard my vision was clouded with tears and I could barely see boy #1 glaring at me as the alarm was once again going off. He’d only managed to change the time the alarm went off at.

A few months later, enter boy #2. This boy was not trying to impress me, as we’re related, but does like to live up to his self-hyped reputation as a bad ass and a general awesomeness at life. He also insisted that he could fix the watch alarm from going off. This again involved much time spent fiddling with the watch. The good news is that he did manage to turn the alarm off. The bad news is that he also made the watch beep on the hour, every hour.

I’ve gotten used to the beep on the hour every hour, especially as I don’t hear it at night. It was this past weekend, with my mother sleeping in my living room that I realized the watch continued to go off throughout the night right where any overnight guests are sleeping. This further impressed upon me the need to buy a real damn watch. One that is not magical and that I can control.

Who on earth would have thought that a $10 digital watch could outsmart three fairly intelligent people. Normally I wouldn’t have included the word fairly in front of intelligent, but hello, we’ve been outsmarted by a watch.