Watches: My Seiko LM (circa 1977)

I visited my parent's home today and went to my old room.  While looking around, I found my old Seiko LM watch in my bedside table.  This was given to me by my parents as a graduation gift from grade school in 1977.

There it was lying at the bottom of the drawer after all these years where I had placed it the last time I must have worn it.  This must have been in 1993 when I bought my Tag Heuer with the first salary I had earned working.  At that point, I had alternated wearing the Tag with my prized Omega Geneve.

While this watch doesn't look much compared to my other watches, it continues to have a special place in my life.  If only this watch could talk, it would have many tales to tell - some memorable, some I would rather forget.   

I remember wearing it for the first time in a long trip in 1978 when I saw Mayon volcano spewing lava at night at a roadside in Albay.  

This watch was on my wrist during the highs and lows of high school and college life. It was what I would look at unconsciously when the school bell would ring to signal the start of classes in high school.  It was what I would stare at, trying to will it to move faster when sitting in a boring class or duirng my math classes where I was academically challenged.  It was the silent witness when I would cut class and spend the time playing video games (space invaders, pinball, pacman) at a nearby shopping center (they weren't called malls yet at that time).  

It was the item I hated to look at during parties especially when it signalled my "curfew time" to go home.  It was the one thing I constantly looked at to keep a date with girls that I courted.  It was the companion on my wrist when my first girlfriend said "yes" underneath a pine tree in the garden of their resthouse in Baguio. This watch was with me to complement my looks while wearing a suit during my high school grad ball, with my girlfriend clinging on to my arm.

And yes, it was also on my wrist on 22 May when we broke up that relationship and said "I love you" to each other for the last time as boyfriend and girlfriend.  After that, it was my silent partner that would seem to whisper to my beer sodden brain for me to go home in the early hours of the morning in the aftermath of my breakup.

This was the unforgiving reminder on my wrist when I struggled through my final exams in college, reminding me that time was almost up while my test booklet was hardly filled up.  It was present during those great times that I shared with my college buddies.  It was on my wrist when I went up the stage to receive my hard earned diploma from the University President

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This was my faithful companion that kept me on track with my appointments for job interviews and was on my wrist when I signed up for my first job. 

This faithful companion unfortunately was not working when I picked it up today.  Tomorrow, I'm bringing it over to the Seiko service center and have it completely serviced.  It's the least I could do for something that has been a witness to my personal passage of time...