May 30, 2003 05:27 PM

OK, I think I'm regressing to fifth grade.

Exhibit One: I wanted to get a watch. Just a cheap-ass digital. 'Cause I have a decent watch, but it doesn't fit me, and even if it did, I wouldn't want to wear it every day because I've totally busted every decent watch I've ever owned. Like, into multiple pieces.

In the back of my mind, I remembered the cool Casio calculator watch I had in fifth grade. It was totally the most awesome gadget anyone had ever seen in either my elementary school class or my Boy Scout troop. Before anyone under fifteen had cell phones, PDA's, Discmen, or laptops, I had a "hi-tech" water resistant Casio calculator watch, with 12 big chrome numerical buttons, dual-time, a stopwatch, and an alarm.

And a game.

The game was key. It was nothing really . . . just a low-tech version of Tetris. A row of numbers would gradually crawl across the watch display, and each individual number would disappear if you punched the correct calculator button in time. The numbers would appear faster and faster as the game progressed, and if the row of numbers actually reached the far edge of the display, it was GAME OVER for you.

Remember, this was the early eighties. No one had even imagined a Gameboy yet. So to be able to pull out my watch and play an electronic game while, say, canoeing on the Russian River with the Scouts, or ambling around Golden Gate Park on a school field trip . . . well, that was considered nothing short of miraculous.

Many of the guys were jealous.

The girls didn't really care.

So last weekend I had, like, fifteen minutes between activities, and I walked by a Walgreens and thought, hmm . . . maybe I can get a cheap-ass watch there . . .

I walked in, found the watch case, and . . . SHAZAM! . . . they had the VERY SAME Casio calculator watch I had as a fifth grader.

Well, almost the same. They make the calculator buttons out of black plastic now, not chrome. And it doesn't have the game. I guess they figured people would just laugh at it these days.

I can't explain it, but this watch makes me downright euphoric. It makes me happier than anything I've bought in a long time. It's so frivolous and uncool and nostalgic and so very ME. It's like I'm re-united with a part of myself.

And if people piss me off, I can pretend that it's an intergalactic communicator, and I can use it to call the mother ship to strike my enemies down. Just like I did in fifth grade.

I do miss the game, though.

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