Death of a Talking Watch

 

I have a bunch of talking watches left over from my talking watch caper. 

 

The talking watch caper was one in which I tried to be a public service to the old folks at the home where I live.  I bought a dozen talking watches from Dr. Leonard medical supply house for $5.99 each.  I sold them to residents at a loss...a flat five dollars per watch. 

 

What a mistake.  I became the Talking Watch Man, and I was forced to become maintenance man for all those watches.  I had to set 'em, no easy task, and I had to fix broken watch bands, and I had to give refunds of the five dollars when the batteries went dead.  Eventually I ended up with three returned watches and one of my own that I wore.

 

I tried to set them all to the same time, but five dollar watches are not chronographs...they all run at slightly different rates.  Starting a few minutes before every hour and lasting until a few minutes after the hour you hear them announcing "It is five o'clock PM", each on its own schedule.

 

I tried to replace the battery in one, another mistake. The cost of a replacement watch would have been $5.99...  cost of battery $2.79,   Anyhow, I lacked the tools and the skill to get replacement in correctly.  As a result, watch went nuts, announcing the time at random.  I tolerated that because it was amusing.

 

However day before yesterday it started a soliloquy... "It is four fifty four am."..over and over and over...at 4;54 am. I got up and whacked it hard, and it shut up.  For then.  Later in the day it began announcing the time at random again.  Soon it became annoying and I tried to shut it up by whacking it again... to no avail. It continued talking every minute  or two.

 

I filled a container with water and dropped the watch in.  It was silent for a while, but pretty soon I heard muffled little beeps from the water.

 

Still later in the day I needed the container so I took out the now silent watch. I noticed the display was blank.  I threw the watch in the waste basket. I hadn't simply thrown it away before because I was afraid it would begin beeping in the trash collection dumpster and alert someone who would call the bomb squad, not being acquainted with talking watches.

 

My lady friend came over and while she was visiting she was startled by a little voice from the waste basket.  "Five," it said wearily.  We laughed and I forgot about it.

 

About two AM it began giving a single beep every fifteen seconds.  I felt the watch was very heroic, not wanting to die like that.  But I couldn't tolerate its plaintive little beep four times a minute. So I got up, found a little screwdriver, and removed the back and removed the $2.79 battery,

 

I continued the autopsy and found the inner workings very interesting. Its little corpse is lying in state in my room.  It is silent. 

 

I miss it.

Tags: Dr. Leonard's talking watches