In 1978 I order my first digital watch—recently affordable—through a mail order deal from Texas Instruments. I pay for the basic $19.95 model, though I lust after the higher-tech $79.95 version with multiple features. Two months later, I find the coveted attempted-delivery slip in my tiny mailbox. Seconds after leaving the post office, I open the box and am surprised and thrilled to discover the expensive model—a mistake I am willing to live with.
I spend an hour poring over the directions, setting time zones and calendars, learning how to measure elapsed time (down to the hundredth of a second). I start timing everything, from shaving to phone conversations. I am running five or six days a week, and I time my various routes and interim sprints, keeping track of personal bests.
After my run, I sometimes reward myself with a frozen yogurt from a tiny store recently opened, the first of its kind on the Upper West Side. In mid-November, a sign in the window reads: Get your treats early in the evening, with bad weather we close early. And soon like all birds, we fly south.
I go in for what turns out to be my last frozen yogurt of the season, and the guy behind the counter asks to see my watch. He is in the market for a digital watch and wants to know what mine can do. I proudly run through all the functions, and he says he wants one, where should he go. I tell him about the mail order.
“But where would I go to get mine? I can’t wait two months.”
“I don’t know. I guess Macys is worth a try.”
He writes it down.
I get a call from a woman who says she works for a fulfillment house. I tell her that sounds like an intriguing place. She replies that the wrong watch has been sent to a number of people, they’re not sure who, and if I received the wrong one I should mail it back for exchange. “Not me,” I say. “If I did, I’d be glad to, but I didn’t, gotta run, bye.”
Later that afternoon, while running in Riverside Park, I fantasize about an undercover agent stopping me, asking for today’s date and, when I find the answer on my wrist, saying, “You’re busted; interstate fraud.” I laugh and pick up my pace. I check my watch: I have a good shot at bettering my four-mile record of 28 minutes and 4.3 seconds. I can hurdle the quadruple-seven-minute-mile barrier.
I pump my legs harder as I approach the tennis courts. A ball comes flying over the fence and bounces into a bush about twenty yards ahead of me. “A little help?” a guy in tennis whites yells.
When I was growing up in Brooklyn and Lynbrook, there was an unspoken vow to respond to any playground call for “a little help.” But I never stop for anything in the middle of a run, fearing that the aerobic chain would snap. Plus, there is a personal best to be had. “Sorry, I can’t stop,” I reply, speeding up to show I am a runner, not a jogger.
“Yeah, run away, you asshole,” the guy screams and waves his racket in my direction. The word asshole coats my guilt with anger, and I decide he's some modern-day Pistol who thinks the world is his oyster (which he with tennis racket will open).
On my return loop, I keep my head down as I approach the tennis courts. Another ball flies over the fence. “Can you fetch our ball, please?” This time a sweet woman’s voice. Then I hear Pistol say, “Don’t ask that asshole, he doesn’t stop for anyone.”
This guy isn’t taking me seriously as an athlete. Without breaking stride, I point to him and say, “Why don’t you stop your game and tie my shoes, asshole?”
Let him come after me. My third wind is kicking in. I start my stretch-run a quarter of a mile early. Not used to running so fast on the narrow part of the path, I veer off and feel my arm scrape along the fence, followed by a jolt and a twinge in my shoulder socket. When I regain stride, I check to see how much time I’ve lost. The watch-face barely holds on to the strap: a fighter on the wrong end of a knockout punch, display blank. My shoulder aches.
I finish my run, dizzy from hyperventilation. I’ll never know if I have broken the quadruple-seven-minute mile. And I can’t send the watch back for repair.
A few months later I go in for my first frozen yogurt of the spring, and the same guy is behind the counter, in animated conversation with a customer. He points to his wrist and I hear him say: “And look, it’s a stop watch, and an alarm clock, and....”
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