Watch

I was every bit of thirteen years old, standing next to my mother in a store, not but a few hundred miles from the north coast of South America. The store was a wonderland of high-priced, high-end goods from Europe. “Duty Free” said the sign. I was transfixed by a particular Swiss watch. I knew I could never have such a thing, but stared and imagined the joy of owning this watch. The sales person talked to my mother, my mother talked to my father, I left the store wearing that watch. I wear it to this day.