A parcel arrived on our front doorstep the other day, and knowing what was inside, I was greatly pleased, even excited. After surgically cutting away the cardboard and adhesive and slowly unwrapping several layers of packing material, I held in my hands my new watch cabinet. Shiny red rosewood with a glass window on top and brass fittings, it was carried upstairs with especial care to its new home in the master bedroom.
What is a watch cabinet, you ask? It’s a cabinet for watches: in this case six inches high, a foot wide, and two layers deep, with ten compartments for wristwatches on each layer. The upper layer is the one with the glass window; you have to pull out a drawer to see the lower floor. I had not planned on acquiring a new cabinet; but the number of watches in my possession has increased in recent years, and my older, smaller cabinet—a black leather affair with room to display seven watches—forced me to store my extra timepieces, one on top of the other, in a separate box.
You can imagine how disturbing such disorder must have been, every evening when I put my watch away and every morning when I picked another one for the day. You can also imagine what it means to give a damn about such things. My alluring wife, who has been privileged to observe these curious rituals over the years, admired my new rosewood watch cabinet (at my prompting) and, after a significant pause, gently inquired: “Do you really need twenty watches?”
Any psychiatrist reading this narrative will instantly recognize some variation of the symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). In my case it has never been professionally diagnosed, but you need only look around my residence or my office to witness the pathology.
All my life I have been a collector—antiquarian books, Anglo-German colonial stamps, letter openers, autographs, souvenir pencils (sharpened), busts, steel engravings, neckties, English medieval coins, jazz/classical albums/CDs, coin-silver spoons, fountain pens (broad nib)—the list goes on. And like any good collector with OCD, I distinguish, within each collection, its own divisions and subdivisions, carefully catalogued and neatly arranged. My daughter likes to open the drawers of my desk and bureau to show friends the strict order of boxes, the arrangement of Swiss Army knives and male bric-a-brac, folded dress shirts, and ironed handkerchiefs. My son, alas, has inherited some of my collecting tendencies but not (I am relieved to say) the accompanying passion for the full panoply of military-style deployment and display.
On the one hand, it’s something of a curse: Any vacuum—space on a wall, gaps in a sequence—must be filled, and disorder or disruption is discomforting. But it’s not a particularly severe condition, in my view—I’m not a hoarder, and I practice economy—and in its curious way, it gives satisfaction. No hunter is more gratified than I when a long-sought volume is tracked down, no craftsman more content than I sharpening a pencil.
The watches in the new cabinet are typical in that way. One of my two pocket watches and two of my wristwatches are inherited from my father, who died when I was comparatively young. I didn’t know him very well—he was a distant, rather enigmatic, person—and they are a suitable connection. One, indeed, was sent to him by my mother when he was a naval officer in the Pacific during World War II. I am an inveterate acquirer of souvenirs when traveling, and certain watches are the result: A clunky Soviet-made specimen with a graphic of Mount Ararat I bought in Armenia; an elegant gold timepiece depicts Berlin Cathedral. A few feature the seals of institutions of higher learning I’ve passed through, and two come from presidential libraries (Franklin Roose-velt and Richard Nixon).
Some are slightly absurd—a “left-handed” watch with the winding device on the port side, an Air France watch with an orange plane at the tip of the second hand—and a few are comical. I own a vintage Spiro Agnew watch, which works just fine, and a Bob’s Big Boy watch (his arms are the hands) that my wife presented to me as an anniversary present when we lived in Los Angeles. Another, from the Peninsula Fountain & Grill in Palo Alto, features a motto instead of numerals: “Get out and eat/Eat and get out.” My sole digital wristwatch commemorates Donald Duck’s golden anniversary (1984).
I mention all this, by the way, not to congratulate myself on my splendid collection but to explain, if any explanation is possible, why the arrival of that new rosewood watch cabinet gave me such pleasure. And, of course, why my alluring but long-suffering wife’s reaction was a hybrid of amusement and—well, pity.
Philip Terzian
