This weekend during a Covid-19 clear-out, I stumbled across my childhood watch collection – and entirely by coincidence, a friend of mine was sharing that he had just purchased what was to be his daughter’s first watch, and the idea of his daughter perhaps finding her first watch thirty years from now resonated with me quite a bit. Finding these watches sent me for a journey down memory lane, and this article is for those who want to come along for the ride!
I always liked watches as a child and having found these it would seem that over the course of growing up I had a few of them! There was only one from the five I found that I can’t remember at all, and for this article I thought it would be good to share the stories behind each of them in turn – at least so far as I can recall! Firstly though, here they all are together, with the watch I was gifted for my 21st birthday that resides in my watch box (I found the old strap and extra bracelet links with my childhood watches, too!):
My childhood watch collection
Swatch
Whilst I can’t remember where this one came from, I can remember having worn this Swatch for many years, and based on some of the other watches here, I would guess that this was a watch I wore during junior school and maybe into the early years of secondary school. I can’t remember any specific occasions now as it was too long ago, but I love the idea of it being the watch I wore perhaps to go fishing and know when it was time to go home for dinner, given this was all long before the days of mobile phones!
Lorus
This Lorus is a watch that I wore during secondary school, through sixth form college and into university. In all likelihood, this was the watch that would have replaced my Swatch as my everyday watch and confined it the back of a drawer somewhere! I think this will have been my first ‘grown up’ watch with a metal bracelet – it’s quite interesting to see that the dial layout on the Lorus is the same a TAG Heuer Carrera I purchased years later! This Lorus would have seen me through the majority of my teens up to my 21st birthday – if this watch could talk I can only begin to imagine some of the stories it lived through that I have long since forgotten!
Lorus - worn for many years
Timex
In terms of memories, this watch probably gives me the best bang for my buck! I bought this at the end of my university days, I would have been 20 years old, before I headed out to the US as a part of the CCUSA Program. For those who don’t know, this is ‘Camp Counsellors USA’ – a program where you have the opportunity to work at a kids camp in the USA for a few months over the summer. In terms of life experience this was the of the best decisions I ever made – at 20 years old I went out to America, knowing nobody that I was going with or who I would encounter, a real adventure.
I spent two summers at Camp Lokanda in New York State with this Timex on my wrist (shout out 12737! If anyone from Lokanda ever happens to be reading this article, please get in touch!) This watch conjures up some truly wonderful memories for me at camp of being high up in a tree canopy, swimming, and even water-skiing, and then travelling afterwards which even included a sky dive in Las Vegas – even though I only wore this for two summer periods, this watch really saw it all!
Sadly the strap perished when I found it, but still… I made a lot of memories with this!
Park Lane
This is the watch I mentioned earlier that I cannot remember at all. It’s a shame that I can only share a photo and no memories really, but never mind! Part of me wonders if it is even mine and I have just accrued at some random point? I guess we will never know!
Unknown brand
I can remember being given this watch as a leaving gift from a retail shop I worked in for the best part of 8 years or so. I don’t think it was one that I ever really wore too much, favouring the Lorus instead (I was always more of a one watch person growing up), but to me this is the beauty of watches in that they don’t necessarily have to be ones that were worn to be important. I spent many years working in this shop with some really great people, and so whilst this watch might never have been something that got a lot of wrist time, it still packs a lot of punch memory-wise!
Guess
This was my 21st birthday gift from my Mum and is a watch that I wore for many years – indeed it still takes a place in my current watch box as to me this is the first time I really went looking for a watch to buy and so I guess marks my first ‘proper’ acquisition. I can still remember us deciding that my gift would be a watch, and even us going into the shops to find the right one and ultimately deciding on this.
It came with two strap options, a brown leather strap and a metal bracelet at the same time. Originally, I chose the brown leather strap which after a few years of wear and tear was swapped for the metal bracelet. I remember finding this and thinking that the brown dial and leather strap looked really mature and grown up, and I wore this up until my first visit to Sydney at the end of 2012, where I made my next purchase coming home via Dubai.
My 21st birthday watch
I hope you have enjoyed taking this quick trip down memory lane! Do you remember your childhood watch collection? Do you still have them? Let us know via our Contact page, or via our Instagram.
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