I like watches. Always have. When I was a child I used to like to look at the watches at the jewelry counter in our local Wal-Mart. There were no cell phones (or computers) back then so watches were both a necessity for timekeeping and a fashion statement for kids and adults.

One year I fell in love with a Coca Cola watch with a man with a fancy mustache in a tuxedo on it. The watch was sleek, all black. I don’t remember how much it costs, probably not a lot. It had a plastic band and casing.

I wanted it and I got it for my birthday or for Christmas that year. I wore it until the battery died.

I have a lot of dead watches today. I don’t mourn them. I don’t give their corpses life again. I don’t bury them and say good-bye. They are reminders of memories and time gone by; they were marvelous timekeepers whose time ran out.

A Coca Cola can’t change that.