SR936SW

I would rather risk dismantling and reassembling a Fabergé egg than attempt to replace my wristwatch battery. Even simply removing the back of the watch is a complex operation requiring a steady hand and nerves of steel. One small slip and the entire case will be irrevocably damaged. And if I can remove the back without incident, I'm faced with an intricate set of cogs, wheels and springs that makes the inner workings of H. G. Wells' Time Machine look like the engine of a Honda Civic. Then the battery must be eased away from its mooring with surgical precision. Removing the detonator from an unexploded bomb in a densely populated area is child's play by comparison. I swear the asylums of the world are full of quivering, wild-eyed wrecks who tried to replace their own watch batteries. So, for sanity's sake, I pay a local jeweler a princely sum to do it for me.

Methuselah is a million years old, slightly hunchbacked, came from some European country that no longer exists, and is disgusted by modern chronometry. He knows more about Swiss movement than the Rothschilds know about Swiss banking, and whenever I visit his workshop he tries selling me an antique Rolex that is even more ancient than himself. After failing to make that sale, he offers me a selection of vintage lizard skin watch straps, so antediluvian they possibly came from a flayed Tyrannosaurus Rex. Nothing doing, so he resorts to insulting my watch because it was built in Russia, by Vostok. I actually own another Russian watch, made by Raketa, that he would really despise. But fortunately that one is mechanical and doesn't require a battery. 

Considering his great age, I'm surprised Methuselah doesn't need a battery himself, just to keep going. Perhaps he does. Perhaps his wife must take him to the watch-repairman repair shop every six months to keep the old man ticking over. And perhaps the watch-repairman repairman insults her for still being married to such an archaic model from a vanquished motherland. He's a dying breed, no doubt, and they'll run out of spare parts for him one of these days, which means Methuselah Jewelers will sadly pull down its storefront shutters for the final time. Who will replace my watch battery then? Can I trust an American jeweler with a magnifying glass and flash light strapped to his forehead? I'm not sure. Maybe I'll be forced to retire my Vostok an buy a Timex or, God forbid, an Apple watch or Fitbit that you simply 'charge' with the appropriate USB cable. That will be the end of Time for me.