1) My watch stopped working on Wednesday. I could have taken it somewhere to have the battery replaced, but I was disinclined to do so, having paid ten dollars for the watch five years ago. It would have cost me that much, I’m sure, to replace the battery. Therefore, I decided to purchase another ten-dollar watch. I like to buy my ten-dollar watches at the drugstore. I needed dental floss anyway, so the whole errand made sense.
Unfortunately, a ten-dollar watch is not as well-made these days as it was five years ago. I think I would have to pay twenty dollars to get the equivalent of my old ten-dollar watch. As anyone who has spent any time around me has doubtless observed on numerous occasions, I can’t sit still. One of the things I tend to do is absentmindedly take off my watch and fiddle with the strap. The first time I did this with my new ten-dollar watch, at my therapist’s office (where I really can’t sit without some compensatory expression of nervous tension) the strap broke.
I don’t know whether the solution is to buy a more expensive watch, or to wear something else I can fiddle with instead. I also don’t know how to reconcile my general fussiness with the fact that I am willing to wear a ten-dollar watch.
2) Yesterday I had occasion to pick up and read Shel Silverstein’s book The Giving Tree, which was touted on its dust jacket as a “wise exploration of acceptance, and understanding people’s varying capacity to love.” If I may say so — what a load of unmitigated crap. The book is a handbook for codependency if I’ve ever seen one. Anyone who reads this book to a child should be shot on sight. The message of the book is that it’s perfectly OK to take advantage of someone as long and as far as you can,as long as the person you’re taking from will let you do that; and/or that giving until you die, without dignity, without expectation even of decent behavior in return, will make you happy.
And on another note — who took the author’s photo on the back? He looks like he’s been in jail for most of his life … a swarthy, broken-toothed convict. Surely someone could have taken a better picture than that. He looks as though he is possessed by some evil force, which is, frankly, how I felt about him after reading the book.
3) Yesterday I had a piece of peach pie. It was a very good pie; a lot of people’s peach pie is really tasteless, but this was delicious. The bakery had left the skin on the peaches, which added, perhaps, to the flavor, but certainly gave it a nice texture. Maybe that’s how cats feel about mice. They’re juicy and tangy inside, but they have that nice soft chewy skin for texture. After I had this thought, I felt queasy.
August 30, 2008 at 10:46 pm |
I’ve always thought you needed a nice set of worry beads. I have a lot of tigereye beads around, I can make you one if you like.
I myself prefer Jack Prelutsky, especially “The Baby Uggs Are Hatching”, which I liked to read out loud. “And the uggs that eat their mothers are the ugliest uggs of all!”
I’m a cobbler girl — I tend to prefer berry cobbler, which is hard to get wrong, but I would definitely eat a piece of peach pie with the skin on the peaches.
August 30, 2008 at 10:48 pm |
I like the bead idea … since I tend to fuss with things in public, perhaps I would give the impression of praying on a rosary, and people would think I was holy.
August 30, 2008 at 11:01 pm |
I used to fiddle with my watch all the time, until I got one with a Velcro strap. (I went from the high dollar “eco” powered whatever to the $10 Target watch with pink plastic accents. I don’t see myself going back anytime soon.)
I rather liked that part about the possible texture appeal of mice. I imagine animals like the same things that disgust us for the same reason(s) that they disgust us. Dogs love stinky garbage, dead animals, sniffing everyone else’s posterior, etc. My ex-cat was far less disgusting than my dog. He also did not greet people by totally invading their personal space. Definitely something to be said for cats….
August 30, 2008 at 11:07 pm |
I’m usually fiddling with a bracelet, so I know what you mean — but it’s always something that slips on and off. I’d never unfasten something to fiddle.
Once I had an extremely vivid dream of eating a mouse, so I’m convinced I know exactly what they taste like. Mousy!
August 31, 2008 at 12:13 am |
Now I’m queasy, too.
Just buy a damn battery already.
I always hated The Giving Tree. As a child, I never understood why it was good to give and give to selfish assholes and then die alone, unappreciated.
Plus, I hated the artwork.
August 31, 2008 at 12:29 am |
I have had the same Seiko watch for thirty odd years. I paid about a hundred dollars. You have likely paid more than that in ten dollar watches. It has even accidentally gone through the washer and dryer several times, though not touted as waterproof, and exited ticking away perfectly, after the glass de-fogged. I’ve bought new bands every few years. Batteries seem to have lasted at least ten years. So, David, you might want to treat yourself. You can even get one with an expandable band that never ever breaks. It’s not like you have to get a Rolex.
Oh, and speaking of children’s books and your peach pie, my kids had a book called “Mouse Soup.”
August 31, 2008 at 1:57 am |
I have noticed this about watches. I bought a watch in eBay a few years ago for a very cheap price and thought I had gotten away with a really great deal until it started failing and I learned the laugh was on me.
Then I bought a free watch (too long to explain) and it was worth less than I paid for it. So I took it back because there were no instructions. The nice young clerk said, “If I can show you how it works, will you not ask for your money back?”
I said, “Yes.”
After about five minutes he started cursing the watch and opened the cash register and haned me my money.
Time is running out on all of us.
August 31, 2008 at 2:50 am |
My husband and I are both magnetic (I kid you not) so we kill watches and, to a lesser extent, computers. Lee can only use a computer with a metal case and can’t use a compass at all – it points right at him. For these reasons (and the fact that I have a neurosis that sends me into a tizzy if I’m missing my watch, so it better be waterproof), I buy Timex which can usually withstand the pounding, the water and the magnetic environment, usually for about 2 years. Lee can wear Timex as well. For about $20-40, you can get a tough watch (and don’t bother switching out the battery – it won’t be waterproof anymore). Or you can just buy a new strap for $6.
I have the book you read, but the general acceptance of using someone (literally) to death made me uncomfortable, so I didn’t read it to my daughter. It might have come from my librarian sister – many of the books she suggests are somewhat depressing – but I might also have picked it up on my own. I don’t disagree with your assessment.
There’s a lot of tartness in the skin of a peach which is lost if you stick with the relatively bland flesh. Your mouse thought doesn’t bother me in the slightest, though I’ve never tasted mouse. I have an iron stomach and am unabashedly carnivorous.
August 31, 2008 at 6:07 am |
Sitting in my junk bowl on my coffee table is my long dead $20 watch. Like you, I’ve pondered whether to spend the bucks on getting a new battery. Unlike you, I’ve never made the bold move of buying a new watch. Instead, I now fiddle with various bracelets. And I second the recommendation for a mala type of bracelet. Chicks love a sensitive spiritual guy and being stretchy and beady, there are all sorts of ways you can play with it.
August 31, 2008 at 11:06 am |
1) My beautiful watch was a given to me as a gift about four years ago. It’s been sitting in my jewelry box needing a battery for months, and I work ten feet from the jewelry counter.
Buy a battery already.
2) It’s a horrible book. Better they should read almost anything else.
3) I’m a berry cobbler girl too, and can’t stand peach anything but love peaches.
I’m a little too grossed out to comment on the mouse thing.
August 31, 2008 at 1:15 pm |
Shawn — I’m so grossed out that I don’t know if I can ever eat a peach again.
LazyB — Where the heck do you live? I totally want to move there, wherever it is, cuz I’m tellin’ ya, there’s no market here for sensitive guys.
Steph — Yeah, I wonder why most people peel peaches before making peach pie? Probably because they don’t want to eat mice. Or something like that.
Mr. Random — There is no such thing as a free watch. Or a free lunch. Or a watched lunch never frees itself.
Squirrel — The expandable straps do break if you try hard enough. I bet you can guess how I know that.
But your point is well-taken; I should just shaddap and buy a decent watch. I work hard. I deserve to know what time it is, right? Right.
Jax — Exactly my thoughts about “Giving Tree.” And the artwork bit major, major ass.
Paula — You dreamt about eating a mouse? Hmmmm. I once dreamt about eating a kitten who was impaled on a stick like a Popsicle. It was highly disturbing. Don’t have that dream. You won’t like it.
Amy — Yes, I do have to admit that my cats have never yet provided a body cavity search as a way of saying hello. Just another reason why I loves ‘em.
September 1, 2008 at 3:29 am |
Mmm, peach pie. Urk, mouse pie!!!
Re: Shel, he really was a piece of work.
Just check out some of his song lyrics:
http://www.lyricstime.com/shel-silverstein-lyrics.html
September 1, 2008 at 9:07 am |
I always thought the point of the giving tree, is that you feel bad for the tree. The tree is representative of a parent, who gives constantly to the child, and the child is supposed to feel a sense of obligation to give back after he/she is done with the book. Or at least to appreciate all that the parent give the dependent child. It made sense to me when I read as a child.
Shel wrote a lesser know poem fro adults about some lady named Sal who smoked so much pot that she died. You’re not off the mark about that at all.
September 1, 2008 at 11:18 pm |
Been a long time since I read The Giving Tree, but your response tends to make me think the story is effective rather than not. Yes, the tree gave and gave and gave, but I don’t necessarily see that as Silverstein’s model of what love ought to but maybe more a portrait of what things really are.
Humans are selfish critters. What we do to things we profess to love is pretty damn atrocious. And the way we treat trees… aside from the anthropomorphizing, was the Giving Tree portrait far off the mark? Maybe the tree didn’t hafta be such a milque-toast about it, some indignant anger would be refreshing, but in real life a tree has no voice and we use it, take advantage of all it has to give and leave nothing in just the way the story displayed, except more swiftly. Being made aware of the one sided direction of that relationship is kinda enlightening. Maybe Silverstein was more effective than you realized by making you balk against the progress of the story.
September 1, 2008 at 11:19 pm |
Shel wrote some pretty interesting stuff for Playboy.
September 1, 2008 at 11:24 pm |
Am — What troubles me is the repeated assertion that “the tree was happy” as it was being taken advantage of. I think there’s a very disturbing message there … I’d have been OK if the tree really did have no voice or feelings but it does … it’s delighted to fucked over, so to speak.
September 2, 2008 at 5:21 am |
I haven’t time to read the comments but if you haven’t figured out a watch solution, might I suggest that you take the band off of the watch that doesn’t work and put it on the watch that does work but has a broken band? Would that work or are either/both the kind you can’t change the band on?
I currently have no working watch either. I have about six watches but the batteries need to be replaced, which I will do when I get my act together to open them up and see what kind of battery they take! With luck, it will be one available at the Dollar Tree. They have 4 packs of watch batteries for a dollar.
I have a worry stone that I used to fidget with but I had to expend great energy to keep myself from throwing it at certain people so I put it away!
Shel Silverstein was a fun read when I was teaching my very fist classroom. That was the year he died. All the schools in the local school districts stopped using ALL of his writing in the classrooms because his estate specifically forbade the use without permission and fees to the estate (which was reported at the time to be his family’s doing). So out went all of the books, workbooks, and worksheets that we had been allowed to use prior to his death.
I love peaches. I went to the store and they are soooo expensive locally. I ended up paying something like #3.89 for four peaches. I’m enjoying them because at that price, I won’t have any more this season.
September 2, 2008 at 8:01 am |
The tree was happy? Really? Hmm. I have to admit, it’s funny what they’ll publish for kids. I heard someone who hated the “Rainbow Fish” story because it gave away all of its rainbow scales after the other fish made fun of it. Same idea, different story.