The Watch
You wanted a watch. It sat boldly on a rack among other pretenders and at a store you don’t remember the name of, but you wanted that watch. You wanted it enough that you told your friends at school about it. It was a fancy, beautiful, and expensive watch. You were the new kid, so maybe these weren’t your actual friends, but they became your friends once you told them that you’d have such an amazing watch by the beginning of next week. They didn’t believe you, but they would just have to wait and see.
The next day, you gather all the change you have, ask for an early allowance from your parents, and head to that store with the intent of leaving with that watch. You don’t look at anything else, because there is nothing else in that shop. You count your money once, twice, and then three times to make sure the amount is correct. You look at the price of the watch, and you know, even before you had even bothered to gather what little fortune you had that you never had enough. You weren’t even close, you were crushed. You count the change again because you have to prove your friends at school wrong, you have to prove everyone in the store wrong. You have to prove yourself wrong. You would rather feel like an idiot for counting and counting again the money you had and realizing you had mistakenly counted it wrong, rather than knowing that you did not have enough. You had to be wrong, so you count again. But you aren’t. You still come up short. Your parents aren’t rich, you aren’t rich, but you are not leaving without your watch. Your hands, they move on their own. There are so many disappointments in your life, but your hands, they aren’t one of them. They are capable of moving, ever closer to the watch. You wait until no one is looking, and you do what you have to. You purloin the watch. You were certain as you did that your ten-year-old eyes had noticed nobody watching you, so you took it, confident that you were right. Yet, they were ten-year-old eyes, and eyes much older than yours watched you take it, yet they said nothing. You realized later how important this moment was because it changed your life. That man who watched you take the watch would help shape you into what you would become.
It keeps you up at night, sometimes, this moment. You realized that stealing that watch changed you. Going against society’s wishes, your parents' wishes, and your wishes, was the single most significant event in your life. You realize that if you had rich parents and you were able to buy that watch your life would have just kept going on, and you wouldn’t be the person you are today. If you had bought the watch, it would have likely been the centerpiece of many of your conversations for weeks to come, but after that, it would have been just a watch. And years later you would have broken it due to your carelessness, and you would have moved on. You would have married the daughter of some rich parents, and that would be that. Instead, you did not have the means to buy it, and you chose to steal it, and that petty theft would be the reason why you become the hero that would be sung about for years to come.
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Thanks a bunch for reading. It means a whole lot that you would. Now word on the street is, and I’m the street by the way, that I have written and self-published two short stories through Amazon. Check them out if you’re interested with the links below
They are currently only in e-book form.
