Narrative Description -- Tangible Object Essay

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The reason that the watch reminds me of my father's humility is the way he avoids wearing it in any company who might perceive it as a purposeful display of wealth or status.

My father has never worn it where the circumstances would amount to rubbing his (apparent) wealth in the face of others. In my family it has always been a good-natured joke that my father's watch is worth more than everything else he owns combined, except for his car. In fact, if my father keeps both his car and his watch for much longer, it may be worth more than everything else he owns including his car. He has always bought his clothes at places like Target and he said many times that if he ever lost his watch he might have a hard time justifying paying for a new one and that he might not be able to enjoy it afterwards because it would be such a waste of money. He has taught me that status symbols (like expensive watches and cars) are almost always a sign of insecurity and that he loves his watch because of its history and because of its mechanical beauty and in spite of the fact that is also recognized as a status symbol rather than because it is.

I remember my father explaining the mechanical history of his watch when I was very little. The watch was very purposely chosen and manufactured to specifications as a space watch.

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It is a manual-wind watch because NASA engineers could not be certain how well an automatic watch would work in zero-gravity. Back then, there were no battery-powered watches; all watches were mechanical which meant that even automatic winders required the motion of the arm to spin a winding gear. In space, that gear might not have worked; that is why a manual-wind movement was selected. The chronograph functions were specifically necessary as backup timers for procedures and they were actually relied upon to time retro-rocket burns by the Apollo 13 crew after they lost electrical power. Even the crystal is made from a synthetic material called Hesalite instead of glass. NASA feared that if a glass watch crystal ever shattered in zero gravity its tiny broken shards would be a serious danger to the eyes and lungs of astronauts. Hesalite scratches more easily than glass but cannot be shattered by impact.

My father's watch does much more for me than tell time. It is a psychological link to my father and his past that I can hold in my hands; it reminds me of his values and of some of the things I respect about him; and it is a fascinating example of beauty from the perspective of mechanical function and ideal suitability for a specific purpose. I do not care that any ordinary quartz watch is much more accurate than the even the best mechanical watch. My father's Omega Speedmaster will always have….....

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