May The Road Rise Up To Meet You

I've been going on runs lately. The first time since many, many years ago. And as I tortured my body in a way that seemed to give me satisfaction (weird, yes. But then again, I'm a weird kind of guy), I couldn't help glancing at my watch. I've done it in the past whenever I used to go on runs, but the watch I wore back then had died and I gave it a proper burial (underneath the woods behind my old house). This is a new watch that I'm wearing, recently bought from Marshalls, and the whole time I'm running, I'm keeping track of my splits and forcing myself to go faster in the final meters of my run even as I'm coughing up my lungs on a silver platter. The digits were everything to me back then and I had conditioned myself to hold them true for so long that it was no surprise to me that my eyes always wandered back to my wrist. The time meant something, the soreness of limbs after the trials of minutes and miles were just the perks. As I drowned myself in water afterwards, I started thinking about classes. In college that is. How many times I've seen someone turn to their iPhone or just regular old, crappy phone for the time. How many times someone's asked me what the time was and the frown that followed my: "Time for you to get a watch, BBBBOOOOYYYOOO!" It never really occurred to me how few of us "responsible, hardworking adolescents" actually wear a watch. Some of you reading this might be one of the few outliers in the pack, or the majority of you may wear a watch. Even you professor. Time is a factor always being taken into a count for tasks and decisions and deadlines and appointments and such, so it makes sense that we human beings always want to be on top of time. In a none inappropriate way that is. I've engaged in lengthy discussions with my peers in this course regarding the future generations to come. The kids being handed an iPhone by their parents or the kids glued to the television screen. A buffet dinner for Apple and Microsoft and all the business corporations breadwinning their own dinners because of how technologically assimilated these kids will be. I wish I could say that I'm overreacting, but I'm really not. How many of these kids will actually wear a watch. Will they follow in the footsteps of their predecessors: digging in their pockets, asking someone else, texting someone else about what time it is *slaps forehead*? It depresses me just thinking about it. I love watches. Especially the old-fashioned stop-watches linked to a chain to a vest to a collared dress shirt. You know, the ones from the times when people rolled their own cigarettes. Those watches amaze me. The clockwork amazes me. I only wear a digital one because I'm reckless and careless and I'll probably break the timeless treasures. And the last time I wore an actual watch, with the dial on the side, I forgot to take it off before diving into a lake. Soooo, that was the end of that. Watches are such a little part of our society. Some people wear them for fun, completely forgetting their function, just as an accessory or a piece of jewelry. You know the people that I'm talking about, the cream of the upper crust wearing ivory and gold and all kinds of fancy watches. But they're the ones constantly texting on their phones. I may sound prejudiced or playing right into the palms of stereotypes, but that's just from experience. Rarely will I see a kid with a watch. And if I happen to do, they'll probably have a really sick looking one. And I'll feel particularly envious and the jelly developing inside of me will be a nonstop thorn in my side. Because I envy the youth, the apathy of pre-high school years. All I want to do when I see a watch on a kid's wrist is: have adventures! Don't grow up! Please, you don't know what college is like! Go on a run and feel the dryness of your throat and the shortage of breath and the evisceration of lungs. Be active before the world of technology swallows you up and makes life so easy for you that you never want to lift a finger ever again. That hard work and dedicated efforts will seem more like chores rather than obligations. I'm ranting right now, but I'm really passionate about watches. Especially the cool looking ones. I'm waking up tomorrow at 6 in the morning and running until my body deems the time appropriate to implode. And I know the answer to this before I even ask it, I will not be able to keep track on the number of times I look at my watch during this run. Just warning you, it's not going to happen.