Super Glue

The other day the orange rim of my cheap swatch broke loose. The six-years-old plastic fell to the floor with resignation, and broke into two pieces, the metal fitting, which sat under it and which, while it was still functioning employed tiny scales to allow the frame to rotate only in one direction, soon followed. The sadness that filled me when I witnessed this, surprised me. It was only a plastic watch, after all, and it had served me beyond the call of its duty during its six years tour since I bought it in a Swatch shop, next to the Dome Cathedral in Milan as a gift to myself after a successful business trip. Because of this history, the sudden loss saddened me beyond belief. Just like the hammer that inspired the drawing on the Soviet Union’s flag and is displayed in a museum in St. Petersburg, my watch too was as good as new. Sure, the hammer’s head was replaced twice, and the handle thrice, but it was an original, alive in spirit, just like on the day the revolutionary artist had drawn it. So what if I replaced the battery several times, and changed the strap repeatedly? The watch has become part of me by now. It was the same watch that was my accomplice in so many adventures, across air, sea and land, under the cuffs of suits just as reliably as over the whitish salt of sweaty hands on desert hikes. How could it break just like this, now in my bedroom, when there was no immanent threat? There must be something I could do about it, I was called into action, and radical problems call for radical solution, I reminded myself, soon remembering the small tube of super-glue stashed in my office’s desk drawer. Crisis also calls for sacrifice, I repeated to myself as I set the watch on the desk-turned-operating-table. The movement will have to cease. The glue agreed to my every deliberation with its strong odor, cementing the reconstructed orange plastic to the timepiece’s body. I wander if the super-glue could have the same effect on my memory. Would my world be a better place?