There’s a first time for everything. It’s not always the best time, but you remember it just the same, because it was the first time.

It was when I found a banged up old steel IWC at a swap meet. The asking price was $200. I haggled it down to $120. And the following day, I sold it to a fancy jewelry store for $250.

Boy, I felt like I’d discovered electricity. What a feeling. If only I could distil the sensation, bottle it and take a sniff whenever I needed a hit of self-esteem. It was good! I had taken this small object from the tacky place in which I’d found it, to a nicer place not far away, and more than doubled my money, just like that! Now was that a miracle or what?

It did not occur to me at the time, and nor am I really saying that this is the way one has to look at things, that when you factor in the effort of getting yourself to the swap meet, dragging yourself round the swap meet, the 8 bucks for the chilli dog and the can of diet coke, the parking ticket, the 3 other stores that didn’t want the watch, the second parking ticket, it all works out to about $2 an hour, which is not much for a college graduate.

But, as I said, you don’t have to look at it that way. Because nothing is quite like the buzz of a good watch deal. And that first kill I made on that $120 steel IWC… it was small but it was beautiful.

However, there was a problem. For all the exhiliration, for all the spiritual zing that this event generated, it was not exactly an experience I could share with my wife. Or any of my children. Or practically any normal person for that matter. I had to keep it bottled up, like some pervert hiding a secret. I had to invent reasons for myself why I was doing this crazy thing, instead of writing a novel or building a house. I had to pretend it was all sorts of other things, other than what it really was – a spiritual experience, a journey into my soul.

A journey into your soul? With a watch? There you are. I told you no-one would understand. B.L.

TO BE CONTINUED