Trail Of Watches

    Today I received an email from an out-of-town friend whom I'd visited last weekend.

       Attached to my friend's email was this photo of a watch which she'd just noticed sitting on her piano. 
    Was the watch mine? she asked.

     (Sigh) Yes, I replied, that's my watch.
     I had noticed that this watch seemed to be missing, but I didn't look very hard for it or, in truth, give it more than a fleeting thought. I figured it was to be just another the many watches I've left behind along life's path.
     Watches, earrings, sunglasses, gloves, library books, all eventually go the way of all things; however any of the above objects that fall into my possession will for sure go that way a whole lot quicker. Alas, The Biggest Loser is me.
     But of all loseable objects, I have a special propensity for losing watches. I suppose this is because, unlike many of my fellow 21st Century humans whose phones now serve as their timepieces, I have a special propensity for wearing a watch. But I also have a special propensity for removing my watch often and setting it down on the nearest available surface.
      I think this trajectory of wear a watch, remove a watch, lose a watch comes, in my case, from being a piano teacher.
     For me a watch is a work necessity,

...as I teach lessons in students' homes,

...each lesson running for half an hour, more or less - well, never less, though often more, and if I didn't have a watch I'd never know when to stop the lesson.
     But just as my students are required before their lesson begins to remove  their watches, fit-bits, twisties,  Livestrong bands, rubber bands, yarn bracelets, hemp bracelets, friendship bracelets, or any of the other myriad possibilities of things that youngsters can show up for a piano lesson having  wrapped, snapped, or tied around their wrists, the principle being that playing the piano is difficult enough without having something possibly weighing on, constricting, obstructing, or otherwise bothering your wrist, 

...I, too, remove my watch at the beginning of each lesson and set it  on the piano.
     In fact, removing my watch before playing the piano is so automatic for me that I do it reflexively, without thinking. Sadly, putting my watch back on afterwards is not so reflexive; subsequently I'm always leaving watches on pianos, as I did at my friend's house last weekend.
      It so happens that my friend's husband plays several stringed instruments, and so I joked that he should pull out his fiddle and we could have a hoe-down in the living room. I then hopped over to  their piano and played a few bars of boom-chucka, boom-chucka to accompany myself while I sang the melody of "Boil Them Cabbages Down."
     I was totally unconscious of having taken off my watch, and yet my friend had the pic, so it did, indeed, happen.
      Anyway, I emailed my friend back that she didn't need to worry about the watch I'd left behind, that I'm always leaving watches on pianos and losing them, that I keep a stash of cheap Walmart watches at home,

...my current stash, now down a watch,

...and a couple more in my purse.
     I told my friend she could keep my watch if she wanted or toss it into her purse for an emergency  watch in case she lost hers.
     But then my friend probably doesn't lose watches like I do.
     (Sigh) Nobody loses watches like I do.

     *The turquoise-banded watch is not a Walmart watch, my sister Romaine made it for me.

I'm trying really hard not to lose it.

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