At Least My Watch Won't Drown
I made a maddening discovery late Tuesday afternoon. My wristwatch of three years had apparently given up its will for tickdom and it had died there on my desk: time of death, 6:16 p.m. Even a new battery could not resuscitate its beleagured ticker. So, with a heavy heart, I tossed it in the trash with the previous night's pizza crust and set out to purchase a new chronometer to adorn my metacarpal and radius/ulna intersection.
I was off to Wal-mart, that Mecca of all things cheap yet strangely stylish, and my eyes fell upon a near replica of my previous watch, without the digital date readout I had grown to depend on so when writing checks. It's a nice piece of $60 wristwatch technology, a Timex Indiglo with pseudo-gold trim encircling its face. In fact, if you look really close, you can actually see the time of day.
What I have never been able to understand about watches, however, is the advertised depth to which they can descend before their structural integrity is compromised. My new watch, for example, is water resistant up to 50 meters. Now, I can barely dive twenty feet before the pressure in my ears makes me feel as if my brain is being smooshed in a wine press, so I can't possibly fathom taking my watch to a depth of 50 meters just to see if it will spring a leak.
I can just imagine driving along the Mississippi, when suddenly I see a busload of soccer players go careening off the road and into the murky depths of the mighty Miss. Thinking fast, I pull over and go running to save as many people as I possibly can. But, no! I'll have to leave my watch on the bank, lest the bus exceed the watch's 50 meter depth restriction.
And what, I wonder, actually happens when the watch, heaven forbid, comes to rest at a depth of 51 meters? Does it cough and sputter and leak mercury battery toxins? Does it suddenly implode and become a tangled mess of unrecognizable metal?
Seriously, if a steel watch can't function beyond 50 meters, what the hell chance do I have?
Dark Knight. Heath Ledger. Batman. The Joker. Dark Knight. Heath Ledger. Batman. The Joker. Dark Knight. Heath Ledger. Batman. The Joker.
Posted by Ryan at August 1, 2002 04:44 PM
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