Wrapped Around My Wrist

The culminating assignment for my Objects of Lit class:

Wrapped Around My Wrist

I handpicked my delicate watch from a Sundance Jewelry catalog. The heart shaped toggle clasp and miniature (less than a half-inch in diameter) clock face appealed to me through the catalog page’s artfully worded description: “Heart Of The West Watch: An antiqued, western-style face is complemented by a braided brown Italian leather band kissed with a sterling silver heart toggle clasp and turquoise nugget” (Sundance Catalog Online). More of a bracelet than a timekeeper, the watch was romantic and I wanted it around my wrist.

My sister and I had a technique for acquiring items from catalogs as gifts at Christmas or our birthday. Objects of interest were circled, starred, or pointed out with sharpie drawn arrows and the catalog was left, opened to a specific page, on the dinner table or our mother’s favorite chair. During late fall of my junior year of high school, “Heart Of The West Watch” was clearly marked and left out to catch my mother’s eye. I had wanted a watch for some time. As the seemingly only girl without a cell phone or electronic device that told time, I was usually the pestering friend, constantly asking for the time. Besides, I liked being aware of the time. There was a small comfort in knowing the hour, the minute, even the second—knowing that I was going to be on time, knowing I was going to be late. My parents obviously thought so too. With my newly acquired driver’s license and independence, gifting me with a watch was their method of asking me to be responsible. Be home on time. Treat your adolescent freedom with care. There was no surprise when a small, gift-wrapped jewelry box appeared under the tree on Christmas morning.

When I first received the watch in high school, I tried to treat it with the utmost care, holding my new fragile and budding freedoms cautiously. I always remembered to take the timepiece off before I went to bed. Kept it far from water and dirt. During those years, wearing the watch was my choice: I had to remember to put on the new accessory every day and to use it to keep time. Putting on the watch meant I was time manager, striving to take responsibility for getting to my bus on time or aiming to get back home at a decent hour of the night. My parents had offered me the power of responsibility, as well as their trust. I was learning to manage these gifts.

But like most teenagers on the verge of adulthood, I sometimes opted out of my new position as the dependable young-adult. At the time, no one in my family owned a cell phone; communication usually took place on scraps of paper left on the kitchen counter. When going out and taking the car, it was standard protocol to write down where you would be and what time you would be back. Some days I neglected to write down my expected hour of return. Or I would leave the house and forget my watch on the bedside table. More often than not, I would write down a return time, remember to wear my watch, and then purposefully choose to ignore its ticking second-hand during coffee dates, visits to friends’ houses, church outings and errands. Sometimes I was aware of the minutes passing swiftly by, but still used my control of the watch to recklessly abandon time—living in the moment. As I faced maturation, I started resisting the pull of time on my life. Maybe I started to recognize how time would begin to control my life as I matured and wanted to retain a sense of timelessness for as long as possible.

Three years have passed since receiving the watch; I have graduated from high school and moved away from home. I now wear the watch dutifully, almost unconsciously, everyday on my left wrist. I have even started to feel increasingly uneasy and agitated when I leave for school and accidentally forget to put it on. In her essay “What Makes An Object Evocative?” Sherry Turkle writes, “You think you have an organizer, but in time your organizer has you. The organizer is one of many day-to-day technologies that concretize our modern notion of time” (Turkle 310). When I was younger, I thought I had a watch. I kept time freely: choosing to heed the watch when I desired and resisting the time it told when I was caught up in the moment. But now, as Turkle writes about the organizer, my watch has me. I know how long it takes me to walk to work, the gym and the bus stop. I know where the minute hand needs to be when I leave my dorm so I can reach my first class in time. I know how late the bus is and approximately how late I will be as a result of its lateness. I can always answer the question “What time is it?” and instead of using a planner, my entire schedule is organized on my watch face. My classes, work hours, exercise time and more are all arranged between the twelve and six. Time is more real—more concrete—when I wear it around my wrist. I can no longer manage or ignore time because time manages me, forcing me to live in the next minutes and hours instead of the present second.

The watch makes me future-oriented. I wonder if this is the result my parents were hoping for when they gave me the timekeeper. Does the responsibility of being on time and staying on schedule require that I live for the next instead of the now? While I was taking a psychology course, I learned that one strategy for becoming more present-oriented was to not wear a watch. My immediate thought was something like, I really like knowing what time it is. Returning to a present-oriented state interested me but I refused to even try taking off the watch for a few days. Being “on time” is too important now: be on time (or early) to a job interview to make a good impression, always be on time to work, make sure you exercise for a certain amount of time each day to stay healthy, get your paper in by a certain time, have excellent “time-management” skills. Time did not hold this much importance as a child. I only knew that car rides were too long and playtime was too short. I was never aware of the time. Even as an adolescent and brand new watch owner, I knew how to live in the present. Am I now an adult because I allow my life to be regimented by time? Because I appear to be unable to go a day without my watch? Now that my watch manages me, I yearn for the childhood years when I never wore time wrapped around my wrist.

This longing could be the reason why I continue to wear the watch even when the battery has worn down or it stops running. When I travel to other warmer areas, for some unbeknownst reason, the inside of my watch face often collects water droplets and the clock stops. Even though the watch is completely useless and not functioning as it should, I leave it on. Sometimes the watch slows and constantly gives me an inaccurate time; or, the clock hands stop moving and I have to reset the time on multiple occasions throughout the day. I still always wear the faulty piece because in the moments when the watch malfunctions, I am briefly free from time. Sometimes I experience a passing sense of panic when the watch stops working, but then I quickly adjust to my liberation. Though I continue to let the watch run my life when it operates, I revel in the moments when I can wear the timepiece and not be affected by its governing.

In reality, my watch was probably created for aesthetic use as a bracelet or accessory, instead of keeping time. The watch face only has the two numbers—the twelve and six hour—and without correct vision using the watch for its function is almost impossible. I use it as a watch, but in its disuse I can wear it is as an accessory. Years of wear have faded the leather band and the turquoise charm has fallen off. The metal frame is dented and worn. The glass covering is scratched. The artistic qualities that originally made the watch appealing have faded and yet, every morning I remember to fasten it around my wrist. I carry on wearing the watch because my adult life requires that I be managed by time. Even so, there is always the possibility that the watch will not run and I will be briefly released from its control. Then I continue to keep the watch around my wrist as an accessory that reminds me to live in the present.

Though the watch was what I originally wanted, I did not anticipate its contradictory contribution to my transition into adulthood. I thought the watch offered a path to responsible adulthood—a tool for controlling time. I could not have known how the watch would separate me from a carefree and timeless childhood. Or how the watch would begin to manage me. In hindsight, I can see that the watch allowed me to mature but left me desiring a life separated from time. The watch created a new adult, managed by time, and a soul longing to be immune from time—a duality wrapped around my wrist.