At Age 40, It's About Time To Get Another Wristwatch

Editor's Note: Tony Kornheiser is on vacation. The following column is from the Best of Tony Kornheiser collection.

My grandfather gave me my first watch when I was 5. It had been his own watch, and it had great sentimental value. It had a silver, expandable band, and its crystal face was faintly yellowed with age. I slipped it around my left wrist and admired it. Then, I lowered my hand, and my grandfather's watch, which was way too big for a 5-year-old, slid rapidly off my wrist, landing face down on the thick kitchen tiles and shattered.

"Que sera, sera," I said, that being a popular song at the time.

"Get a load of this kid," my grandmother exclaimed. "He drops an heirloom, and thinks he's Rosemary Clooney."

I didn't put on another watch for 35 years. If I needed to know what time it was, I asked somebody. If nobody was around, I turned on the radio. If I didn't have access to a radio, then I was probably on vacation, so time wouldn't matter anyway.

Digital out, Roman numerals in

Recently, as a concession to middle age, I started wearing a wristwatch. (What if I have grandchildren? What would I give them, my Left Banke albums?) As soon as I did, I noticed all the other watches. They're everywhere. Pages and pages of them in the Sunday paper. The country has gone watch-crazy. People own five, six, seven watches - even though they still only have two wrists. Like fancy-schmancy cars, watches have become a way of showing off how well you're doing. Michael Milken had a $45,000 gold Rolex watch; understandably, he was concerned with time, since he's doing so much of it.

As most of you know, digital is dead - though it's still big in Maui: "Digit Goes Hawaiian." If you have a digital watch, get rid of it immediately so you don't further embarrass your family.

Retro is in. Today's watches strive to evoke a simpler, long-ago time - some time before watches were invented, as so many use Roman numerals. (Except some Movados, which have no numbers at all. Apparently, you're supposed to guess.)

Reconditioned watches are extremely in. Yuppies rummage through their attic, looking for a watch that's been buried in a trunk for at least 70 years, and then pay out the wazoo to get it fixed. Many of these old watches have radium dials, so after a few days, your wrist glows in the dark - solving the problem of buying a night light. The owner of this reconditioned gem is deliriously proud until a 75-year-old with a Seiko laughs at him and asks, "Where on Earth did you get a piece of junk like that, sonny?"

A watch that cleans house

As a consequence of this nostalgia for simplicity, the multi-function watch of the '70s is passe. This is bad news for people who think a watch ought to be able to tell you at what temperature to fry an egg on Mars or the latitude and longitude of Sierra Leone. Of course, they can buy an almanac and strap it to their other wrist.

Years ago, all anyone asked of a watch was that it tell time. Then it had to be waterproof, then shatterproof - a common fantasy in the '60s was to smash John Cameron Swayze with a hammer and throw him over the side of a tuna trawler and see if his infernal Timex was still ticking after they fished him out.

I confess I want more in a watch than just the time.

I want a date. Not the date, a date. Preferably with Michelle Pfeiffer.

I want microwavability. I want to be able to put my watch in the microwave and set the dial on high power for two minutes, and when I take it out, I want it to have made dinner.

I want a watch with four-wheel drive.

I want a watch that every so often spontaneously bursts into music by Zamfir, master of the pan flute.

I want a watch where instead of numbers, it has the faces of all the Democrats who voted against the Gulf War.

I want a watch that cleans my house. It could be the maid's watch. I don't care.

I want a watch that informs me how many bowls of various cereals must be eaten to equal the nutritional value of one bowl of Total.

I want a watch that keeps track of my cholesterol and beeps like crazy if I so much as look at a French fry.

I want a watch that will make me look like the guys in the Bugle Boy ads and will make my wife look like the girls in the Michelob Dry commercials.

I want a watch that when your watch beeps in the movie theater, my watch will launch a nuclear missile that takes out you and your watch.

Truly, I want my grandfather's watch back.

Copyright 1996, Creators Syndicate Inc.)

Syndicated humor columnist Tony Kornheiser, who writes for The Washington Post, appears Sundays in the Scene section.