Some objects are tiny but take up a huge place in our memories. For me that object was a Casio that fitted my wrist.
Today I am 39 years old. More than thirty years have passed, but the light of that watch is still in my mind. When I close my eyes and think for a moment, I can even see the first day I put it on.
In this post I want to take you there too, to 1996. But first I need to go back a little further.
The First Watch on My Arm
I was four or five years old. My father had brought a watch from Arabia. As far as I remember it was metal. I have a hazy picture in my mind, but one thing is very clear: the first moment the cold metal touched my wrist.
The watch was too big for my arm and wobbled a little. Still, I would raise my arm and look at it without hurry, like the grown-ups. I did not yet know how to read the time. What mattered anyway was not what it showed, but that there was a watch on my wrist.
Even at that age a person suddenly feels grown up.
Then childhood went on. Games, falls, new things I was curious about… That watch withdrew to a quiet corner of my memory and waited there for years.
1996: Those Who Had Watches and Those Who Did Not
In 1996 I was in third grade. We had our white collars on our school smocks and chalk dust on our hands. We lined up in front of the blackboard and raced to be the one to clean it.
In those years the most precious thing in class was break time. And knowing how many minutes were left until the break was a small kind of power.
Because not everyone in class had a watch. The kids who did were, without realising it, like the class’s timekeepers. When the lesson seemed never to end, a whisper would come from behind or from the side:
“How many minutes are left?”
The kid with the watch would wait for the moment the teacher turned to the board, lift his wrist slightly under the desk, look, and answer with his fingers or a movement of his lips. “Seven.” A little later the same whisper came again. “How many now?” “Five and a half.” “And now?” “Quiet, I’m looking!”
Some friends asked every minute. The more they asked, the longer the minutes seemed to get. But I think having a watch was as much a privilege as a burden. The kid who knew how many minutes were left held the most valuable piece of information in the class.
Everyone Had an F-91
Among the children of that time there was one more invisible uniform: the watch on our wrist. And that watch was almost the same for everyone: the Casio F-91.
It was small, black, square and digital. At break time we argued over whose alarm was louder and whose light was brighter. Since everyone had the same watch, these arguments never ended.
Then a watch was bought for me: the Casio F-94.
When I first saw it I understood the difference at once. Everyone else’s was an F-91; mine was different. To me it looked much more stylish. Maybe I think so even today because of the feeling this watch left in me, I do not know. But in those days when I looked at my wrist I did not see “like everyone else’s”, I saw “my watch”.
The Day I First Wore It
I remember the moment I took the watch out of the box very clearly. I tried the strap holes one by one. One was tight, one was loose. At last I found the one that fitted my wrist just right. Then I raised my arm and looked: the digits, the two dots in the middle blinking, the seconds flowing silently.
The next day on the way to school I did not hide the watch in my smock sleeve. I even swung my arm a little too much as I walked. When I entered the classroom I did not know what to say, so I waited quietly. At last someone asked: “Is this another model?”
When I heard that question a small festival began inside me. “F-94,” I said. My voice sounded proud even to my own ears.
Setting It to the Exact Second of the Bell
After a while the watch stopped being an ordinary object in class and became a ritual. A game we all shared began: setting the watches by the bell.
For us the school bell was the atomic clock of its time. Nobody trusted how many seconds fast or slow the clock on the radio or television was. The correct time was the time at the moment the bell rang. No argument.
A few minutes before the break ended, those with watches gathered in small groups. Everyone entered setting mode, put a finger on the button and fixed their eyes on the far end of the corridor. Nobody spoke. The silence was such that even breathing loudly was considered rude.
And the bell rang.
The fingers pressed the button at the same moment. The seconds reset and everyone’s watch was made equal. For a moment the time on all our wrists was the same age.
But this happiness did not last long. Five minutes later someone would surely say: “My watch is two seconds behind yours!” Another would answer: “No, your finger pressed late!” Then the argument would begin. Whose watch was more accurate, who had reacted to the bell faster, which one would be accepted as “right”? Those innocent childhood quarrels that went on until the teacher stepped in…
The next day we would set them again with the same ceremony. Again there would be a one-second difference. But we never complained about it. Because the real point was not how accurately the watch ran. It was trying to catch time together.
“Mum, What Time Should I Come Home?”
My watch brought one more change. It changed the old agreement between home and street.
In our time the hour to come home was set not by a watch but by a sound: “Be home before the evening call to prayer.” While playing in the neighbourhood, as the sky turned red, the call to prayer would rise from somewhere and the game would end. My mother did not even need to call from the window.
But now I had a watch.
One day before going out to play I turned to my mother and asked in a serious voice: “Mum, what time should I come home?”
My mother paused for a moment and looked at me. I remember she was trying to hide a smile. “Come before the call to prayer,” she said.
“Mum, what time is the call to prayer? Tell me, I’ll check.”
This time my mother really laughed. Then she told me roughly what time the evening call to prayer would be. I looked at my watch, fixed it in my mind as if I had learned the most valuable secret in the world, and ran to the door.
It is impossible to count how many times I looked at my wrist during the game that day. My friends were surprised. “What do you keep looking at?” they said. “I’m going home,” I said, “I promised a time.” Even at the most exciting point of the game I checked the watch, and as the time approached I told everyone “I’m off”.
I got home on time. A little early, in fact. When my mother opened the door I said “Mum, I came right on time!” I still remember the smile on her face.
That day, for the first time, I understood that respecting time was less a responsibility than a pride.
The Light Under the Blanket
But the real magic was at night.
The house went quiet, the lights went off, everyone slept. I did not. I pulled the blanket down over my head and took my watch with me. I pressed the light button and the digits appeared in the darkness. The space under the blanket instantly became a small house: its ceiling fabric, its lamp the watch on my wrist.
I pressed once and the light flashed. I pressed again. I watched the numbers. I waited for the blink of the two dots in the middle, for the moment the minute changed. If a sound came from under the door I felt as if someone would appear saying “still not asleep?”, but each time joy beat fear. I had a watch, it had a light, and that light belonged only to me.
Even as I write this a smile forms on my face. Because now I understand better something I did not understand then: happiness is sometimes made of just a very small light.
Looking Back Today
Over the years since, so much has entered my life. Work, responsibilities, fast-passing days… Now phones tell the time. Nobody sets their watch by the second of a bell, nobody whispers “how many minutes are left?”.
But when I look at a Casio I still return to the same place: under the blanket, beside a dim light, to the small world of a child in third grade.
Perhaps that is why I collect watches. Because to me a watch does not only show time; it is like a door left inside time. I begin writing about my Casios on this blog through that door.
Which was your first watch? Do you remember the day you first wore it, who saw it first, which bell’s second you set it to?