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ExamForce :: Article Archive :: Newsletter Article
 The Cert Times: IT Edition Article Archive
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| Another Visit to the "Gap" (B1N@RY N@T10N (A.J. Axline)) |
I was trying to have a nice, quiet supper of Count Chocula with a side of bacon, but Vector was freaked out, and [VectorFreaked] is greater than or equal to [QuietSupper].
"Just so that I understand this correctly," Vector said, "Back when you were a boy, you received your first wristwatch."
"I was in the hospital," I said. "It was shortly after my First Communion, which had nothing to do with me being in the hospital. I was sick with something, I can't remember. Cholera. No, that's not it. Don't remember. Anyway, my parents gave me my first watch. It was a Timex. It had a shiny metal band, the kind that stretched out to fit your wrist."
"What's 'First Communion'?" Vector asked.
"It's a wafer you eat in a big building where people get together once a week to feel guilty, sing off-key, and compare trophy wives. It's also a subject we can save for when I want to get into more trouble with the subscriber base than I'm willing to while enjoying sugar-encrusted breakfast cereal and nitrate-laden meat for supper," I said testily.
"Okay, so, well, anyway," Vector said wildly, "this watch you received for communing or whatever had a retractable steel post on the side of it, right? And, the purpose of this little steel post was to be twisted back and forth in order to tighten the little steel spring situated inside of the case, and this little spring somehow powered the watch itself?"
"That's essentially correct," I replied.
"And, if you happened to forget to attend to the chore of twisting the retractable metal knob..." Vector trailed off, his eyes showing that he already knew the answer, but he refused to say it aloud.
"Then your watch stopped," I said through a mouthful of ventricle-clogging pork. "It stopped ticking, the hands stopped moving, and until you wound the spring up again, your watch sat on your wrist like a derelict spacecraft, unmoving, unaware."
"That's awful," Vector whispered. "That is so wrong. So wrong. Oh my god, how did you people live?"
"Of course, a stopped watch is still right twice a day, which is more than I can say for the current U.S. President," I remarked.
Vector was still shaking his head.
"Just think," I said with a grin. "In the event of a massive global electromagnetic pulse, which will undoubtedly be caused by a terrorist attack, not only will every electronic device be destroyed, but you will have the distinct pleasure of learning how to wind a watch."
Vector ran screaming from the kitchen.
I got up to make myself a cafe latte. "Board games would make a big comeback. Parcheesi. Pop-a-matic Trouble. And Mousetrap, the original indicator of the presence of obsessive-compulsive disorder in children."
I put a cup under the spout and pressed a button on the ridiculously expensive coffee machine we had received as a prize from some draw that Vector hacked online so that we'd receive a free, ridiculously expensive coffee machine. I think he got some college credit for the hacking exercise, so it was all for a worthy cause.
"Card games could come back too," I mused. "Strictly analog, those things. Gin Rummy, and Canasta, and Cribbage. All the analog stuff could come back along with manual watches. Hey Vector, I could teach you how to play Dominoes!"
Screams, screams from the basement.
A.J. Axline posts once a week on The Chaos Jester, and currently owns four watches that need replacement batteries.
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Posted by
nam on 27/02/2008 08:43 |
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