My Conversation with Mademoiselle Tissot

Mademoiselle Tissot is my glorious silvery white Tissot Everytime Large. She is 42mm and all dial, no bezel. And not only is her dial stunningly beautiful, there's lots of it. But she also has the most erratic second hand I have seen on any watch. I decided to speak to her about it. Here's how it went down.

I tell her, we need to talk. Oh? she says. About what? How you never take me out? I know you have 40mm and 38mm and even 34mm watches. You do not care about them. Take me out instead.

Look, I say, I am taking you out. We're together right now, aren't we? I like going out with you, there's just one little . . . problem.

And what is that? she says. Her silvery dial is flashing at me.

It's your second hand, I say. It almost never hits the minute markers. Not only that, sometimes it will shudder and shake. Sometimes it will hit the marker perfectly and then bounce off. It gives me cancer to look at it. But once in a great while, you can count off 30, maybe 40 perfect seconds. So I know you can do better.

Mademoiselle Tissot is not concerned with any of this. My hand always makes it all the way around the dial, she replies. Has it ever failed to do so? Is my timekeeping not accurate?

I grudgingly admit that she keeps the exact same accurate time as my other quartz watches, but then I make the mistake of comparing her second hand to that of my flawless Seiko SGEH49P2.

Her dial flashes again. It is your beloved Say-Ko who cannot keep accurate time, she says. What is accurate about his timekeeping? He hits every single marker every single time. That is not how life is measured out. He is a slacker. He is on autopilot. He is, how do you say - phoning it in.

I'm confused. I ask, What do you mean?

Every single second in life is different, she replies. No second is like any other. My hand always displays this. There are brief moments of indecision when my hand will shudder or shake. Many times my hand will miss its target completely. When I can hit the markers perfectly are those rare times when my hand assures you that although things seem difficult now, there will soon be healing, and things will be much better.

I can't believe I'm hearing any of this, I think to myself. I must be dreaming.

And then I woke up.

I was in an Emergency Room. Everything was foggy. I must have been drugged. Then sudden panic gripped me. Where was Mademoiselle Tissot? I raised up my arm and looked at my wrist. She was still there. I sighed with relief. My eyes tried to focus gratefully on her familiar jittery second hand. Although this time something was different. Very different. The hand was hitting every single marker dead on. 20 seconds, 30, 40, 50! There was the briefest hiccup, and then she straightened it out again. And then, if I didn't know it was completely impossible, I could swear that dial winked at me.

Through the haze I heard a cop talking to the E.R. nurse. He's lucky to be alive, the cop said. We found his car at the bottom of the embankment. He was semi-conscious, slumped over in the front seat, talking to his watch.