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Welcome to the Alphabet Watch, or what I call Alphabet Time.

Most watches worldwide use the common Arabic numerals 1-12 to denote the passing hours, or they use Roman numerals instead. One watch model I found on the Internnet uses Chinese characters (one could also call them Japanese kanji, since they carry the same meanings of 1-12, although the pronounciation is different, of course) for the twelve numbers [written (-), (–), (—) and so on] and the watch was made by the Diesel fashion line. Another watch I have seen uses pictures of the twelve Chinese zodiac signs (dog, rat, monkey, etc.) for the watch face markers, while another one uses pictures of the 12 Western astrology signs (Pisces, Cancer, etc.). Cool.

The other day (it was raining, a little down time between classes), I started tinkering with watch face concepts, after waking up from a short nap, and in my brief dreamtime during the nap, I envisioned a watch with 12 letters of the English alphabet, arranged in an A-L fashion. I made a prototype in my laboratory. A friend snapped a photo.

The watch face is so large that it sits on my arm in a funny way, and people often tease me about wearing one of those prison tracking bracelets, heh.

I work in a school, so there’s clocks everywhere; I’m the technology teacher, so there’s time in the lower right hand corner of most of my students’ field of vision at all times. When I’m in an environment that’s time-sensitive, in other words, I find that time is there already.

When I’m on my summer music festival rounds, I can use performances to roughly track time…when I’m in the woods, I can genuinely be there, and let sequence and being trump my old need for time. If I have somewhere to be, I set my cellphone.

I’ve been watchless now for over 8 years. The watch tan disappeared a long time ago. I never miss it.

On going watchless, I know that I could and survive. I have my cell phone and the clcok on my PC. But there is something about my watch I don’t want to give up. I love the weight ofit on my hand. I enjoy the movements of the hands.

No, I won’t be giving up my watch for a phone.

I say give up your phone, get a watch.

I almost feel like my watch is a part of me when I wear it. As for wearing one in the woods, you can use an analog watch as a compass rather easily, a fact that I enjoy waaaaay more than I should.

Jeff, this is the sort of thing where if you don’t get it now, you probably never will. It’s fashion.