Another milestone tonight. Not a personal one, but a cultural one, though I know I’m way behind the curve. Which is equally newsworthy with my decision not to wear spandex.

I’d been hearing for some time that the wristwatch is dead. Everybody carries a cell phone now, and all the cell phones have built in time readouts, so who needs to take the trouble of strapping a watch on?

These are the things that make us sigh (usually silently) as we age. No great principle hangs on it. No commandment of God is violated when we cast the wristwatch onto the ash heap of history. Probably no one alive today remembers when the wristwatch superseded the pocket watch. It started during World War I (or so I’m given to understand; I wasn’t there), when soldiers in the trenches discovered it was convenient to strap their pocket watches onto their wrists. Up till then wristwatches were considered effeminate, items of jewelry suitable for ladies. But those soldiers marching home with wristwatches changed that. No doubt the older men sighed silently, like me, as they saw the fashion change. Now the pocket watch is back, in the form of the cell phone. I hope watch chains come back, too. That would be a measure of consolation.

Anyway, this all came home to me tonight because I destroyed my old wristwatch, trying to reconcile the calendar function. You know how a calendar watch thinks every month has 31 days, and you have to jump the date at the end of September, April, June, and November, but not the day of the week? I was sure I’d figured out how to do it easily the last time I did the job, but I couldn’t make it work this time, and in my wrath I pulled the whole stem out. My great power overcame my great responsibility.

So I decided a) that I had to get a new watch, and b) that it would be one of those atomic watches that set themselves.

I determined to try a drug store, and if they didn’t have an atomic watch I’d try a big Mega-store which shall remain nameless (because I don’t want to admit I occasionally stop there, even though I’m officially boycotting it).

In sum, nobody had one. But my surprise was in the fact that neither of the drug stores I tried seemed have any watches of any kind.

Drug stores always used to have watch spinners. Usually from Timex. You’d turn them and see if there was something there that pleased you. Then you’d take what you could get, if you were desperate enough.

Apparently that era is over. Watch spinners no longer pay their way. Or else the stores have moved them someplace I can’t find.

“Did you ask?” you say. Of course not. That would give the clerks the opportunity to sneer and say, “Sure, we’ve got the watches back by the buggy whips and the button hooks!”

I bought one on eBay.

Our friend Loren Eaton meditates today on the value of reading (or watching) sub-par stories. Interesting thoughts.