Papa’s Personalized Wrist Watch Creations

“If wishes were flies, I would be king,” my father would say to me as he put on his personalized watch. Papa was a watchmaker (Hint: a watchmaker is a person who makes watches. If you don’t know what a watch is, it’s a little miniature clock that one straps on the wrist using a leather, plastic, or metal band. If you don’t happen to know what a clock is, then you probably aren’t capable of using the internet. Please depart from the internet immediately.)

Dad would make us kids all sorts of watches, each of us kids received a personalized watch for Christmas, a personalized watch for our birthday, and a personalized watch for most major holidays, excepting St. Patrick’s Day. (Papa was from Scotland. He said he wouldn’t start celebrating that darned excuse for a day to go out and get drunk until people started celebrating St. Andrew’s Day too!)

I loved the child wrist watch he gave me, the one with Gumby fighting against Big Bird. Gumby was winning – he had this sweet headlock going on where he wrapped one of his arms around Big Bird’s neck, and the other around all of Big Bird’s legs, and then both of his hands were pulling out Big Bird’s tail feathers.

The best personalized watch my father ever made though was for my older brother, Samson. He was always Papa’s favorite, but we weren’t jealous of him for that – we were only jealous of his watch. It was a fun watch, with 2 faces that were kind of joined together in the middle to form one face. On the left face was Obi-Wan Kenobi, on the right Darth Vader. Each of them was holding 2 light-sabers, and whenever Obi-Wan’s light-saber would touch Darth Vader’s, a speaker would go off with the sound of light-sabers clashing. When the watch struck noon & midnight, (I still don’t know how Papa did this) Darth Vader would slash his light-saber through Obi-Wan’s cloak, and Obi-Wan would disappear. It was a very fun watch indeed.

Every personalized watch that he gave us was memorable, a gift to be cherished. I’ve kept all of mine, even the child wrist watch that no longer works. Of course, even the way that it was broken is memorable. I was watching TV, and wanted to watch Thundercats. My sister, however, wanted to watch Strawberry Shortcake, so she walked in and changed the channel. I jumped up and changed it back. She changed it too, so did I, so I kicked her in the shins. Then she bit me, I grabbed her nose.

Finally she grabbed my personalized watch (this personalized watch had Voltron & a robeast on it. When the hour struck he would draw his sword, and slice the robeast in half) she tore it off, and slammed it against the fireplace. I couldn’t believe she would do that to me. I loved that personalized watch! I broke down and cried, and refused to speak to my sister for 6 months. I’m still not completely over it. Darned sister. Oh well, I guess I have to love her.