By Jim Hagarty
1989
I found a boy’s wrist watch on my lawn and suddenly, every 10-year-old boy in the neighbourhood has lost one.
The day I discovered it on the ground near a parking lot where some serious skateboarding had been taking place, I asked a group of boys nearby if any of them had lost a watch.
“I did,” a boy on a skateboard piped up immediately. “Whatzit look like?”
“You tell me,” I answered him, suspiciously.
“Ah, is it black?” he asked me.
“Yes it is,” I replied, encouraged.
“Ah, is it round?” the boy ventured.
“Yes,” I said again, but my doubts began returning.
“Ah, does it have numbers on it?” the boy said.
“Uh huh,” I agreed, by now convinced I was not talking to the owner of the watch.
“Well, that’s my watch all right,” he smiled, triumphantly.
“No it isn’t,” I said.
And, not the least bit disappointed, the boy skated away on his board to spread the bulletin on the Underground Neighbourhood Kids On Bikes Network that a watch had been lost.
Reaction was swift.
“You the guy with the watch?” another boy asked when I came to the front door.
“I am,” I answered, cautiously.
“Could I have a look at it?” he asked.
“No you can’t, “ I said. “Describe it for me.”
Like the first boy, he started off right. It was black, round, with numbers.
But then he got bogged down in those darned specifics.
“Ah, does it have those five Olympic rings on it?”
“No.”
The next day brought another boy to the door, in search of his lost watch. By this time, though, I decided to pass out a hint.
“It has a picture of somebody on it,” I said. “Who is it?”
“Ah, Hulk Hogan?” the boy said.
“No,” I answered. His other guesses – Randy Savage, Wayne Gretzky, and Indiana Jones were also all wrong.
Wednesday night, another watch hunter came biking up the driveway and I began to feel like a game show host asking contestants to choose Door No. 1, Door No. 2 or Door No. 3. And I discovered that boys have a terrific capacity to remember what a watch looks like, in general terms, but they have a heck of a time recalling the finer details.
After getting by the first few hurdles, the boy asked: “Does it have a calculator on it?”
It does not.
And I am still the keeper of the watch.
It’s black.
It’s round.
It has numbers on it.
Name the person in the picture . . .
And it’s yours.
