How Can You Be So Stupid As to Sell All Your Watches?

 

How Can You Be So Stupid As to Sell All Your Watches?

Baines hadn’t had his eBay listings posted for more than five minutes when he received a call from his best friend Roland Dooley. 

“Baines, I just saw all your watches listed on eBay. They’re all half under market price. Have you lost your mind?”

“Relax, Roland. It’s all part of the master plan. I’m busting a big move.”

“You sound psychotic. Is your wife leaving you? Do you need cash? Look, man, I’ll buy your watches for more than you’re asking on eBay.”

“I don’t need your charity, Roland.”

“It’s not charity. I want to buy your watches. Take them off eBay and bring them over. See you in twenty minutes.”

He looked down at his Exit Watch as if he knew the timepiece had something to say.

“Don’t just stand there, Sour Pants. Gather your things and tail over to Roland’s.”

“But he’s a watch addict with more watches than he can deal with. I feel guilty.”

“Don’t sweat it. You can’t cure your friend of his addiction. He has to want to cure it himself. Meanwhile, you need to unload this unwanted baggage. I don’t want to see it anymore.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I suppose you’re right,” his timepiece mocked Baines’ words. “God, you overthink everything. You’re driving me crazy. Let’s move.”

Baines deleted his listings, put all his watches in a cardboard box, and headed for Roland’s house. 

Roland was a forty-eight-year-old man-child with limited social skills. He lived with his mother, Maybelline, on the outskirts of town on a lot that sold seasonal pumpkins and Christmas trees. During Halloween when families carved Jack-O-Lanterns and made other crafts on the pumpkin patch, Roland and his mom rented ponies, an endeavor that tripled their cash revenue stream.

Roland was an only child. When he was seventeen, his father died of a massive heart attack. A year later, his mother sent him to a private air pilot academy in San Diego. He immediately drew the ire of the other boys who one night came into his bunk and busted his jaw with baseball bats.  Roland and his mother won a hefty lawsuit and they spent the rest of their lives together, running their pumpkin and Christmas tree business. Wearing thick glasses behind which his sad blue eyes darted anxiously and having a malocclusion in his jaw from the night he was assaulted, Roland was a hopeless case in the romantic department. He escaped his loneliness by indulging in his watch hobby, purchasing more timepieces than he could wear. His predicament was made worse by the fact that his anti-social disposition limited his presence in public spaces. Wearing his Rolex Master GMT in the morning while eating a jelly donut with his coffee seemed unseemly. Or when his mom came home with Chinese takeout, he’d celebrate by putting on his Omega Planet Ocean. When doing the dishes, he’d downsize to his Rolex Date Adjust. He seemed to have a watch for every occasion. For the shower, he wore his G-Shock Frogman. On his birthday, he wore his Rolex Daytona. For chopping down Christmas trees or hauling pumpkins in a wheelbarrow, he’d typically wear his G-Shock Rangeman or Citizen Promaster Ecozilla. 

In the ten years that Baines had known Roland, his friend had never told Baines the exact amount of his settlement, but Baines could tell by the five dozen luxury watches in Roland’s collection, that the settlement was ample in size. 

Baines stopped his car in front of the chain-link fence that surrounded the pumpkin patch. Roland’s German Shepherd Smokey was usually happy to see Baines, but now Smokey was hiding behind a cluster of large pumpkins, baring his fangs and growling. Roland exited his house, descended the front porch steps, looked at his crouching dog, and opened the gate for Baines. 

“What did you do to my dog?”

“Dogs don’t like me anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Since I got my tactical Night Vision over a week ago.” 

Roland looked at the all-black diver watch on his friend’s wrist. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you got a new watch?”

“Do I have to tell you every time I make a watch move?”

“You always have in the past. What’s different now?”

“You and I are moving in opposite directions. You’re a watch collector, a watch addict. You walk around your house all day doing a watch swap every hour in a state of abject misery. Why do you do this? Because you have become the Gollum of the Watch Hobby. I, on the other hand, am a One-Watch Man.”

“What the hell?”

“You may not accept it today or tomorrow. You may not accept it next month, or the month after, but eventually you will accept that I no longer worry about a watch rotation. I simply am one with my watch.”

“What happened to you, Baines?”

“I’ve had a realization. I have a raging appetite to accumulate more and more watches. At the same time, I have an appetite to be happy. The two appetites conflict with one another. I had to make a choice.”

“What about our friendship?”

“Not hard to figure out, is it? Take two alcoholics. One continues to drink. The other one achieves sobriety. Do they continue to hang out together? Unlikely.”

Baines handed the box of watches to Roland. 

“Take these. I don’t want your money.”

Holding the cardboard box, Roland said, “You have to come inside and tell my mom what’s happened to you. If I told her myself, she wouldn’t believe me.”