My son has never owned or worn a watch. I find this incomprehensible.
I love watches, and wanted one even before my wrist had formed.
But the explanation for this yawning father-son schism over something as simple as a clock, is that my love of watches is purely cosmetic.
I think we both share Bob Jones' disinterest in chronometric help - Bob once famously fired an employee for arriving late because his alarm clock didn't go off.
"No man who needs an alarm clock to wake up will ever work for me," thundered Sir Bob.
I always wake up before an alarm clock.
But yes, I need a watch for cosmetic reasons, to sting the eye in sunlight, to create something the rest of me can't pull off.
As a teenager, I gazed at the wrists in James Bond movies and bought gleaming watches with gold straps to try and divert attention from mismatched clothing and a conversational persona best described as wordless Woody Allen.
The lust for wristal bling should have evaporated in adulthood, but the wrists in Martin Scorsese mafia movies merely kept it going.
Then came the magnificent beaches of Bali in the 1990s - a haven for surfers, yes, but for me, a haven for cheap copy watches.
Perfect replicas of Cartier, Gucci and Porsche for six bucks.
They didn't last long, sometimes the hands would fall off during the trade, but I brought enough back through Customs to fall in that safe area between not really a dealer, just an idiot.
Inevitably, the huge Rolex Oyster, a little dearer at $11, was the one I wore to prestigious restaurants.
The waiter would arrive at the table.
"Dessert, sir?" he would ask.
I would roll back my sleeve, dazzling him with shards of light from the Rolex.
"Let me see if I have enough time," I would reply.
You get wonderful service if you're wearing a Rolex, I would tell my fellow diners after the waiter had departed, unaware he had returned to the kitchen and told the chef the tosser on table six with a fake Rolex wants the fresh fruit salad, so give him half a can of Pam's peaches and stick a sparkler in the middle.
But I haven't worn a copy watch in a while.
I have bought a succession of still-flashy but cheap watches from places like KMart and the Oriental Market in Auckland.
They all give me a good six or eight months.
I'm not complaining.
The exception came two years ago when I bought a talking watch from an electronics store, a huge ugly thing that engulfed my tiny serviette-holder wrist like the Homer Tunnel swallowing a Suzuki Swift.
The bendless strap appeared to have been made from industrial linoleum, and unless you had attended MIT, you couldn't understand the unique time display.
With no numbers and no hands, it was just a black Rorshach inkblot - testing stuff, indeed, for a man with virtually no eyesight.
"That's quite a watch you've got there, Roy," said my closest personal friends, unaware I am neurally incapable of knowing when someone is taking the proverbial.
But I had bought it because I had virtually no eyesight and wanted to be told the time.
A woman who sounded like she had been Miss South Korea in 1994 did this job with amazing skill and clarity.
Unfortunately, she was also airline-terminal loud, which ripped my wife from her scrummy dreams about ponies in the night and saw her insensitively suggest I put Miss South Korea 1994 where the sun don't shine.
So I bought another gleaming gold, flash, heavy, cheap thing; one so heavy, my wrist, weakened still further from a debilitating 11-week virus, simply cannot bear its weight.
I am therefore watchless, like my son.
But I know what time it is.
I know it is time to buy a sensible watch.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
