Making a shaky case for the need for adults to wear watches

Wearing a regular watch every day has become akin to wearing a fedora or using a landline. It marks you as outdated.

The standard watch (not a fitness watch) is going out of style. Every year, the percentage of watch-wearers goes down–the latest numbers indicate that less than one-third of people wear watches every day and most of those are the aforementioned fitness watches.

Oh, sure, watches are still sometimes seen as stylish. But they're jewelry, like wearing cufflinks or tie clips were seen back in the day.

Wearing a watch every day as a way to keep track of time? It's slipping away, largely because we have smartphones.

When I was a kid, there were a few things that identified a grown man  based largely on my dad):

• An adult male always had a comb in his pocket.
• He also carried a handkerchief (disgusting in retrospect).
• He had a wallet, where he carried cash and various other things (I'm not sure what. I doubt that my dad had more than one credit card, so what else he had in there is a mystery.).
• And he wore a watch. Because how else would he be able to track how long it had been since he'd had his last cigarette or made the last sexist/racist joke to male co-workers?

I attempted to grow into those standards as a teen. I carried a comb in junior high and high school, though I rarely used it. I briefly carried a handkerchief. I carried a wallet, where I kept my student body card, a couple of dollars and a few other things (library card? Baseball cards? Pictures of myself? It's a mystery.).

But those things faded. I stopped carrying a comb. And a hanky.

Wallets have faded greatly, but are still around. We now have digital money and digital IDs, but you still need to carry your driver's license somewhere (I presume we'll soon have digital driver's licenses). Many people in their 20s don't carry a wallet.

The watch is disappearing, because, of course, why wear a watch when you have a phone?

Here are two reasons:

• The first is that it's much, much easier to look at your left wrist when you want to see what time it is than to dig a phone out of your pocket. Pulling out a phone isn't like completing a triathlon, but still, a watch is less work. Watches are good for lazy people.
• But the most important reason to wear a watch is that it signifies that you're an adult and you're serious about life. It shows that you're professional and have grown up. Having a watch (particularly a metal one that expands and contracts) shows that you've grown up, for crying out loud! They have to respect you as an adult!

Wait.

Maybe my watch love is just a secret way to overcome my childhood fear of growing up  but never being taken seriously.

Mind your own business! I can still tell you what time it is in a couple of seconds!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.