The Casio digital Melody watch appeared at the jewelry counter at Miller & Rhoads Department Store in Richmond, Virginia, in 1980.
I worked at Miller & Rhoads way back in the Dark Ages of '79-'81, during my last couple of years in high school. It was a good gig for a high school kid with lots of raw engineering talent, working in the Men's Department at a well-known department store, folding sweaters and button-down Oxfords and helping little old ladies pick out really bad ties for their absent husbands. Lots of time to think about all the electrical circuits I wanted to build, the BASIC programs I wanted to write, the airplanes I wanted to design. When I wasn't measuring for shoes or suits or pretending to know how to match ties. Or chatting with my girlfriend, who worked at the same store (but not always in the same department).
It was a relatively upscale store in the very nice, new (circa 1975) Regency Mall out on the west side of town. There were four main "anchor" stores: Sears, JCPenney, Miller & Rhoads, and Thalhimers, so as might be imagined, the mall was a very happening place. All the kids hung out there. All the best fast food was there. They had a Farrel's Ice Cream parlor! They had an O'Briensteins! They had a Radio Shack!!
And, for the first time in my life, I had money burning a hole in my pocket.
I don't know why I had to have that watch. Watches were not a new concept to me; I'd had a few. Mostly wind-ups, as I recall. Did they even have electric watches before then? I don't know. But they never had the effect of that watch. And it wasn't because of the fact that it played tunes. It was digital. It didn't have hands. You didn't have to perform a mental transformation in your head to correlate the hands with the time of day. You just looked in the little window to the LCD and there it was. The Time. Hours, Minutes, Seconds. Plus the actual date. And you could even set an alarm.
It was so cool. I felt cool wearing it. I felt grown-up. Mature.
And, after a while, afraid.
Because I'd never understood the Passage of Time before.
In the past, of course, I'd seen the little hands on the old analog watches spinning slowly around the face; yet it had never occurred to me that each pulsation of those little pieces of metal was tracking the inevitable growth of entropy, the irreversible disappearance of my life, minute by minute.
For some reason, watching the little digital numerals count up and up and then roll over, along with the date, burned into my soul the concept that a moment had passed in my life that would never occur - could never occur - again. Every second of my life was literally passing before my eyes.
It may have been this period of my life which began my peculiar relationship with Time.
My absolute fear of being late.
I worked at Miller & Rhoads way back in the Dark Ages of '79-'81, during my last couple of years in high school. It was a good gig for a high school kid with lots of raw engineering talent, working in the Men's Department at a well-known department store, folding sweaters and button-down Oxfords and helping little old ladies pick out really bad ties for their absent husbands. Lots of time to think about all the electrical circuits I wanted to build, the BASIC programs I wanted to write, the airplanes I wanted to design. When I wasn't measuring for shoes or suits or pretending to know how to match ties. Or chatting with my girlfriend, who worked at the same store (but not always in the same department).
It was a relatively upscale store in the very nice, new (circa 1975) Regency Mall out on the west side of town. There were four main "anchor" stores: Sears, JCPenney, Miller & Rhoads, and Thalhimers, so as might be imagined, the mall was a very happening place. All the kids hung out there. All the best fast food was there. They had a Farrel's Ice Cream parlor! They had an O'Briensteins! They had a Radio Shack!!
And, for the first time in my life, I had money burning a hole in my pocket.
I don't know why I had to have that watch. Watches were not a new concept to me; I'd had a few. Mostly wind-ups, as I recall. Did they even have electric watches before then? I don't know. But they never had the effect of that watch. And it wasn't because of the fact that it played tunes. It was digital. It didn't have hands. You didn't have to perform a mental transformation in your head to correlate the hands with the time of day. You just looked in the little window to the LCD and there it was. The Time. Hours, Minutes, Seconds. Plus the actual date. And you could even set an alarm.
It was so cool. I felt cool wearing it. I felt grown-up. Mature.
And, after a while, afraid.
Because I'd never understood the Passage of Time before.
In the past, of course, I'd seen the little hands on the old analog watches spinning slowly around the face; yet it had never occurred to me that each pulsation of those little pieces of metal was tracking the inevitable growth of entropy, the irreversible disappearance of my life, minute by minute.
For some reason, watching the little digital numerals count up and up and then roll over, along with the date, burned into my soul the concept that a moment had passed in my life that would never occur - could never occur - again. Every second of my life was literally passing before my eyes.
It may have been this period of my life which began my peculiar relationship with Time.
My absolute fear of being late.
3 comments:
Time is flying by so quickly these days and only speeding up. The 2000's seemed to take their sweet time but the 2010's were a blur. Blows my mind that I feel I already have one foot in the grave and I'm still not even as old as Dad was when I was born!
When I was a kid I had a little wind-up Timex watch that would always be 5 to 10 minutes slow so when I was out and about in the neighborhood playing with friends I could blame my slow watch when I got home late. Not sure why I thought I could outsmart the parents with such a feeble scheme and I don't know that the scheme ever actually worked, but that watch was always behind for that very reason.
Ha! Good scheme.
On the theory that we experience time as a percentage of our lifespan-- a year is 1/54th of my lifespan, so it feels as fast as 20 days to a three-year-old, 1.48 years to an 80-year old, Or like 304 years to a fruit fly-- I'm guessing the speeding up sensation will increase as we get older but it may serve to make those childhood memories stronger. After all, they lasted longer than any other individual memories we will ever have.
It also gives me a little more peace about seeing some of my friends, who are not aging well, slip in and out of mental focus. If they take a few extra minutes to process what I said and make a response, perhaps it is because they are experiencing time differently than I am... perhaps what to me feels like a three-second pause between their words feels instantaneous to them.
The older I get, the harder it is to find the words in my brain. My gadget of choice was my Polaroid Handle camera, which I was as obsessed with as Dad has ever been with his little gem. But the pictures blur and fade over time, like my mind.
When Dad was the age I am now, I was a newlywed.
I worked at Murphy's Mart. Because of Mr. Hite. He gave all the high school kids at church a job. I never even thought of going to the mall for a job. Guess I was in a rut.
Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin, into the fyooooture. Fridays are coming faster every week. It's actually kind of scary how fast they are coming. But then Monday morning comes just as quickly which means I can put the trash out, and then I've got empty cans to fill for the rest of the week.
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