I'm not exactly Mr. Sucker. It takes an accomplished salesperson to convince me to buy something, which is why I literally laugh in the face of Girl Scouts bearing cookies. The above ad, though, actually did the trick. When my new watch finally arrived I slapped it on and ran outside so I could interact with rich people too. Unfortunately, my conversation with a millionaire wasn't quite like the one in the ad.
I wasn't looking for trouble. I sat in a café, sipping my frappuccino and enjoying the quiet. Then it got noisy. Mr. Hotstuff rolled up in his high-performance Italian sports car, dropping attitude. That’s when I decided to roll up my sleeves and teach him a lesson.
"Nice watch," I said, pointing to his and holding up mine.
He looked at my watch, then at his. Then at mine again, then at his. He furrowed his forehead, like there was something he couldn't understand. "Wow," he finally said, lowering the window of his Lamborghini. "It's like we're twins."
"That's right," I crowed. "Yet yours cost $22,000, while mine was only $179 and came with a free pair of sunglasses."
"I am veritably seething with jealousy," he said. "I can't believe you got a jeweled Swiss movement for that price."
I blushed. I purposely ignored the word "jeweled" because people call men's genitalia the "family jewels" and though I knew my watch didn't actually contain any precious gems it could conceivably have held some dick parts. "I think it's British," I said. "Who'd have guessed those blokes could make more than just great food?"
"Color me stunned," he said. "I just can't believe you got a self-winding Oyster movement for that price."
Here I had to bluff, but I crossed my fingers as I talked. I said, "I think mine is a Clam," though I wasn't entirely sure it was seafood.
"And you can scuba-dive with it?" He slapped his watch with disgust. "Wow. I really got taken for a ride."
"Well, maybe not scuba-dive exactly," I stammered, "but you don't need to hide it when you drive by a car wash."
"That is clearly a technological masterwork," he said.
"Truly," I agreed. "It's made of two hundred parts, and it takes six months to put together."
"Really?" he asked, doing the math in his head. "Those must be master craftsmen, only putting on one part a day. Did they sign it, you know, like 'Assembled by Stumpy and Twitchy'?"
I studiously glanced over at him. I though I could almost detect the hint of a smile, but that might have been a smudge on my FlyBoys. "It's amazing," I said, "isn't it? Now you and I belong to the same club."
He looked me up and down, his eyes jealously resting on shoes that had the look and feel of real leather. "Well," he said, "congratulations on buying an heirloom that friends will envy and your children will love. A quality piece of jewelry that you can wear, and an expensive investment that can -- should times get rough -- more than provide for their education."
I pretended to air-clink glasses with him while running the numbers in my head. I smiled boldly though I suspected a pawned Stauer couldn't get an eight-year-old into Gymboree. "That's why they say Stauer is the Robin Hood of Watchmakers," I offered weakly.
He nodded. "That's an apt comparison," he said. "I remember when Robin Hood took eighty bucks from Friar Tuck in exchange for something that looked like a cow."
He drove off with a loud roar and at this point I realized something. Unlike in the ad, my millionaire had never been at a loss for words. In fact, my millionaire almost seemed to be insulting me. There on the cold street I started to second-guess my decision. Had I wasted my money? I mean, the ad said the Stauer factory spent over $40 million on Swiss-made machinery, but they never said it was watch making machinery. They might have bought a waffle maker and eight Zambonis for all I knew.
My face started to redden as feelings of utter stupidity flooded my brain. I looked at my watch and ran for the post office. I'm pretty sure I still had a few days left to return it, but when I spun the metal-toned chronometer all I saw were the words "ALL SIGNS POINT TO NO."
