The Perfect Watch Costs $20

In 1990, when I was 10, I wore a Casio watch that didn’t quite fit. The black band had no Goldilocks notch: It would either Hula-Hoop around my wrist or leave behind pink indentations. Still, the watch gave me a thrill whenever I saw the numbered seconds counting upward on its digital face, each one leaving a pale afterimage. During idle school-day moments, I’d look away and try to guess when 20 seconds had elapsed, then 40, and 60, working the flow of time itself into my muscle memory.

A friend of mine had a Casio with a calculator. I had one with a tinted world map in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. It was faint except for a single vertical line corresponding to the time zone that I’d selected. Twenty-nine were available. Most of them were represented by a major city with a three-letter abbreviation: CAI for Cairo, TYO for Tokyo, LAX for where I lived in California. I’d never once been on a plane, much less gone abroad, but I felt worldly having information about these distant places on my physical person everywhere I went, even underwater.

I recently bought a newer model that smashes together several design elements from the ’80s and ’90s into a sleek, retrofuturist package. It more or less captures the essence of the Casio that I had as a kid. Proper watch guys have taken note of the silver version, but I picked the one with the black-resin band, which contrasts nicely with the synthwave-orange backlight. Even though I rarely check the time on its face—I still instinctively tap my phone’s lock screen awake instead—it has given me more pleasure than any consumer product has in ages. It takes me back to the in-between time before the analog world fully gave way to the digital. It lets me once again imagine myself in a spy thriller set amid the high-rises of a distant metropolis, a moody place of gigantic flashing screens, lasers, and benevolent robots.

I told a colleague about the watch, and being of a certain age and disposition, he immediately ordered one too. And why not? The watch costs only $20. Its low price is part of its spiritual appeal, as is its flimsy, lightweight feel. It is not a symbol of wealth. If the Casio has any glamour at all, it is the glamour of the scientific instrument. Like my old model, the new one has a stopwatch that measures hundredths of a second. I used to try to pause right on 10.00 seconds. I took pleasure in the difficulty of the task, the sheer luck required to pull it off. When I tried the stopwatch game again recently, I didn’t get close.

My 11-year-old daughter has begun to roll her eyes when she sees me playing with the Casio. In so many words, she suggests that it’s an affectation. She compares my watch, unfavorably, to her Apple Watch, which of course wins going away on sheer functionality and the nearly limitless expressive qualities of its color screen. But I make a running case that mine is better. I have to pick my moments—when her battery is low, for instance. “That’s a shame,” I say. “My Casio lasts for 10 years.” I tell her that it’s nice to have a watch that isn’t just another interface for notifications. I tell her that I can set it without logging on to the internet panopticon. I tell her that I can easily replace my watch, if and when it breaks.

But these are all rationalizations. The watch is my madeleine: It throws me back into third grade. At that age, your imagination charges everything with meaning, even commonplace things. The feel of a seashell can stand in for the whole ocean. A simple wristwatch can embody your idea of the future. When I look at the Casio, I’m not seeking the particular details of that future—the neon glow, the black honeycomb skyscrapers at twilight, the dawn of the computing age or whatever. I’m trying to peer back at my purer self, the young boy who, in looking at his own Casio, saw himself looking forward in time, in my direction. I’m trying to keep some tether between us as the hours, minutes, and seconds of our long separation tick on.