Touch, Part 2

So anyway, what brought on yesterday's reminiscence about my one-armed smoking professor was a sidebar article in the British music magazine The Word titled "You Still Here?" about things that, according to the author, should be obsolete but are still hanging around in the 21st century. Among the items listed that I still find various degrees of use for (let alone fondness for) are stamps, newspapers, umbrellas, spectacles (hell, I just got my first pair a couple months ago), cigarette lighters in cars, and razors. But the one that piqued me the most was this one, "Wind-up Watches: As anachronistic as walking around in a tweed suit." Aside from the non sequitur of the whole thing (how can a watch be anachronistic?), I felt the sting of this jab most acutely. Recently an old (as in, was my grandfather's) watch of mine was repaired after years of being out of commission. The repairman was almost apologetic when he explained that the watch had to be wound, manually, thirty "winds" every day or so.

Now there's certainly a sentimental reason for me to love having a functional watch on my wrist again. But is there any other reason? I had gone watchless for several years, and it really was no problem. With all of the mechanical/computerized devices around these days, the time of day is never far from our apprehension. I was late to cellphones, but now I carry one everywhere, and it has become my de facto "go to" time-telling device. I've also become pretty adept at spying people's watches and telling even upside down time from them across tables and counters. And in a pinch, ala my color blind "the world is light or dark," I can always tell if it's day or night.

But I have to exclaim, I love winding my newly repaired watch! It's such a pensive, wholly task to be done, task completed few seconds of my day. The feel of the tiny ridges on my fingers, the repetitive motion of tiny winds, the I am not an animal, I am a human being celebration of my opposable thumb--it's all such a small pleasure, let alone a nostalgic one. I'm always transported to being a little boy again, feeling important with my first watch. I suppose I could also get quasi-poetic and sling the verbiage about having control over time, but such metaphysical joy pales in comparison to the physical, tactile thrill of it all.

It ain't news, but we live in an increasingly push-button world, and contemplating the joys of winding my watch makes me think about the all of the quotidian, tactile pleasures that we have lost or are losing. I love the challenge and feel of opening a cardboard milk or juice carton, but when was the last time we got to experience that wonder? I love still having to open my car door by inserting and turning the key, and I'm sure eventually I'll upgrade to a car whose ignition I won't have to start by inserting and turning. With the recent purchase of some nifty Velcro sneakers, I can go weeks, even months without having to tie a shoe. Remember when writing used to mean having to actually write something? And don't get me started on phones. Beyond the tactile, remember how many phone numbers you used to know by heart? Or even with the arrival of push button phones, when you could remember a person's number only by fake-"dialing" it by stabbing your fingers all around the keypad? Now how many numbers do you know? Once programmed (even remember when that word had such fascist/totalitarian connotations?), all you need to do is push one button. Oh, but remember the physical excitement of actually dialing a phone number on a rotary dial phone. The quick jab of the one's and two's. The resistance/force thrill of a nine and that great feeling of release and the sight of the dial spinning all the way back. And of course that sweet spiral sound of the dial rewinding. They always say smell is the most nostalgic of the senses, but revisiting any of these once-ordinary tactile experiences sets the mind reeling to equal the effect of any effete French cookie.

I know, I've got old fart Luddite fumes spewing out of me at the moment. The man who in college (oh, those days!), after a debate about American League vs. National League, wrote on his graffiti-covered dorm room wall, "If tradition were adhered to, we'd all still be crapping in outhouses; succumb to the modern age and bow to the DH," is now sounding like the old man he's becoming as somebody much greater than he continues to wind the ultimate watch. But pleasure is pleasure, folks, and winding a watch, tying shoes, writing a letter, getting that cardboard spout to jut origamically correct out at you, feeling the heavy click of the door's lock turning--all of it is becoming extinct. Hell, even the good-deed-accomplished rush of a good toilet flush is replaced by buttons to merely push and automatic sensors. Think of it, we have acquiesced our human powers of touch to the point that we have welcomed, with nary a hue and hardly a cry, automatic sensors in our bathrooms! We are the generation that likes to push and to be sensored.

In a million years, will evolution bring us to the point where our sense of touch is obsolete, vestigial at best, like nipples on men? Take a stand. Reach out and touch and work and manipulate something today, before it's gone.

The Replacements-20th Century Boy

The Kinks-The Village Green Preservation Society