The Metamorphosis Watch

If you are a watch enthusiast, sooner or later you will encounter your Metamorphosis Watch.

You will not find it through careful deliberation. You cannot summon it with spreadsheets, YouTube reviews, wrist shots, specification charts, or forty-seven browser tabs comparing lug-to-lug measurements. It simply appears, unannounced, like a baby delivered by a mythical stork.

Price is irrelevant. Your Metamorphosis Watch might cost $80 or $15,000. I know a man whose watch addiction was effectively subdued by the $90 G-Shock Mudman G9000—the so-called “Mission Impossible” Mudman. Another man found salvation in a $5,000 Tudor Black Bay 58. Horological enlightenment, apparently, has no MSRP.

By “cure,” I don’t mean the watch noise disappears completely. Your Metamorphosis Watch is not a GLP-1. New releases will still catch your eye. You will still inspect photographs, read reviews, and occasionally experience the familiar neurological disturbance produced by the phrase “limited edition.”

But the hierarchy has changed.

You have found your leading man.

Everything else in the watch box has become supporting cast.

The Metamorphosis Watch does something peculiar when you strap it on. You become Billy Batson shouting “Shazam!” The transformation is instantaneous. Dead weight falls away. Extraneous worries lose their jurisdiction. You have somewhere to go, something to accomplish, perhaps an innocent civilian to rescue from a burning building.

My Metamorphosis Watch arrived seven months ago.

On a whim, I bought a G-Shock Frogman GWF-1000.

I had no idea what I had done.

The Frogman became my daily mascot in much the same way the “Monkee pants” I wore in first grade allowed me to channel my childhood hero, Micky Dolenz. Apparently, the sixty-year interval between these two events produced less psychological development than one might hope.

I strap on the Frogman and something happens.

Deep beneath the Earth’s crust, I awaken.

I explode upward through magma and volcanic rock, blast through the surface of the planet, and emerge in a cloud of smoke and pulverized granite. Somewhere nearby, an automobile has lost control and is hurtling toward pedestrians at a crowded intersection.

I spring into action.

Seconds before impact, I seize the vehicle, lift it above my head, and carry it several blocks to the nearest police station.

The crowd erupts.

I climb onto the roof of the disabled automobile. My Frogman gleams on my wrist. I survey the citizens below me with the grave composure of a superhero who has once again restored civilization to its proper equilibrium.

“I am Frogman,” I announce.

“Chaos has been subdued.”

The crowd prepares to applaud.

Too late.

I am already gone.

Somewhere, another mission awaits.