About a year ago, I posted about my decision to put a new stainless-steel band, which cost $45, on my old Timex watch, for which I had originally paid $13. I maintained at the time that this decision, peculiar on its face, was actually the most reasonable one under the circumstances: a cheap watch would actually meet my needs better than a more expensive one, so putting a more expensive band on my cheap watch was the most cost-effective way to get what I wanted.
Well, I must have appeared that boasting about the know-how of my preference could best be tempting destiny. Early this year, my watch commenced to get a chunk unreliable; it didn't prevent altogether, but it became dropping time and may once in a while prevent after which begin over again at unpredictable periods. I changed the battery and that first of all appeared to repair the hassle, but after some months, it evolved a new symptom: it would prevent frequently at 7:30 every morning and midnight. It wasn't continuously exactly at 7:30; from time to time it turned into quickly earlier than or quickly after, and now and again, too, it would stop at different instances, however it may quite a lot count directly to save you at 7:30. Once I reset it, it would start all over again and maintain going?Usually?Until 7:30 rolled spherical once more.
I took the watch once more to Jimmy's Watches (the identical place wherein I sold the band for it remaining 12 months), and after checking out the battery and locating it complete of juice, they stated the hassle emerge as maximum probably with the movement?Probably because of water damage. I didn't quite buy that clarification, due to the fact that I'd in no manner taken the watch swimming and carrying it at the equal time as washing my fingers had in no way precipitated troubles inside the past, however after I went right into a jeweler's hold for a 2d opinion, I were given the equal evaluation. The motion was kaput, and converting it would require an high-priced revel in out to a watchmaker, which may cost no longer simplest extra than I'd to begin with paid for the watch, but moreover greater than I could assume to pay for a totally purposeful replacement. Applying my
So, under the circumstances, I decided—regretfully—that the most reasonable thing to do was just to buy another cheap watch and then try, as I had with its predecessor, to keep it going as long as possible. So back I went to Jimmy's and selected a watch from their $15 sale tray that met my basic requirements: a dial face with all twelve numbers and a bracelet band. It doesn't have the little night-light feature that had occasionally come in handy with my old watch, but a little preliminary research had suggested that a watch that did have that feature and also met my other requirements would probably cost at least $55, and I didn't want the light enough to pay nearly four times as much for it.
The real punch line of this story is that now that I have the new watch, my old one actually seems to be working again. It didn't stop at 7:30 this evening, nor this morning, nor even yesterday evening or morning. It's just kept ticking along, right as rain, ever since I made the decision to replace it—almost as if it were deliberately trying to step up its performance in hopes of keeping its job. So now I'm wondering: was buying the new watch enough of a concession to placate the cosmic enforcers of Murphy's law and put the old one back into commission? Can I now start wearing the old watch, which I still prefer to the new one, with impunity? Or will doing that only trigger another Murphy cycle and cause the watch to start acting up again?
It seems likeliest, based on what I know of Murphyonic forces, that the old watch will now continue to behave itself perfectly so long as it's lying unused in a drawer, and possibly even for a few days while being worn—but as soon as I start trusting it, it will then stop again at the most unexpected and inconvenient time. On the other hand, I obviously can't throw away the old watch entirely, as doing that would naturally cause the new one to fail immediately, possibly in some spectacular fashion like falling right off my wrist just as I step onto an escalator. So clearly the old watch has to be kept, but kept unused. (In fact, it's probably just as well that I didn't choose a different watch off the tray, one that looked like it would be able to be fitted with my $45 stainless-steel band if its own band should wear out. I thought this might make that watch a more practical choice, but taking Mr. Murphy into account, deliberately choosing a watch that would work with my existing, expensive band would probably have guaranteed that the band would remain intact while the watch itself stopped working within a month.)
