Once upon a time, a girl (OK, middle-aged lady) happened upon a display of cheap-assed watches at a local drug-store counter.  You could buy a cheap-assed watch for $5 (USD), and a variety of cheap-assed (but very cute) beaded bands for $5 (USD) apiece.

The “girl” thought “Hey, they’re cute and cheap – and I need a watch, what could go wrong?” 

I think I’ve already mentioned that despite being called a “girl” in this story…the girl was a least several years past the age where she should have known better than to ask that question.

The girl bought the cutest watch and the cutest band, and wore them right out of the store, and she was happy.  The watch seemed happy too, nestled amongst the two-to-three bracelets the girl habitually wore on her left arm.

She could go running, and know when she had to turn around in order to be home in time to get ready for her next appointment or event.  She could glance at her watch when her children began practice their instruments and again when they stopped, and know how much time they had practiced.

She could cook a two-minute egg.

All was right with the world.

The watch was a good watch.  It seemed to like the girl, even though she didn’t seem to know how to take care of a watch.  She accidentally wore it into the hot-tub, after a work-out, and it kept running (it was easy to forget, surrounded as it was by braclets).  When she realized that she had submerged a cheap watch completely in hot water for twenty minutes, she took it off, and put it on the edge of the hot tub for the last five minutes, and then forgot it, smooshed beneath the heavy hot-tub cover in the freezing sub-zero cold all night.

Still, the watch soldiered bravely on, and kept on ticking until the girl remembered it, and went back the next day to find it.

But then, one fateful day, (actually it was a day almost exactly thirty days after she had bought the watch), tragedy struck.  The girl looked at the cheap-assed watch and found that it was no longer working.  The second hand was stopped.  The battery was dead.

“Oh, bugger it all anyway” said the girl (who sometimes enjoys using colorful British colloquialisms.  Especially if she can mix and match them in inappropriate ways).  She took off the cheap-assed watch and threw it in a drawer and forgot about it for many months.

Except for when she needed to know the time, and couldn’t see a clock anywhere around, and then she’d say “If only I’d remembered to go to Target and get a battery for that sodding watch”

Then, one magical day, she remembered.  Her youngest son, Grasshopper, had grown out of the last of his pairs of shoes, and was going to have to either get new ones, or join a tribe of Hottentots.  As he was fair, and burned easily, and would likely to grow to a height of somewhere in the neighborhood of six-and-a-half-feet tall, the girl figured that he would likely make a very poor Hottentot.  Also, she wasn’t sure if Hottentots were actually a real sort of thing, or only from fairy tales, and even so, if any of them still existed.  And if any of them still existed, she had no way to conjecture on how easily one could sneak a fish-white, blond-haired, blue-eyed giant into their midst without someone finding something amiss, bare feet notwithstanding.

The Hottentot thing wasn’t likely to work out, is the upshot here.  

So, it was off to Target for shoes and a battery.  The shoes were no problem (except for the part about a seven-year-old child needing adult-sized shoes), but when she went to the counter where they sold batteries, they told her to go to the counter where they sell jewelry.  So she went there, and the lady at the jewelry counter told her (in a snotty voice) that they wouldn’t sell her a battery for any watch that hadn’t been bought at their store.

The girl was annoyed, and thought about being snotty back at the lady behind the counter, but then remembered that she had just recently gotten up on her high horse about how people should be nicer to each other and so she settled for just saying something like “That’s too bad.  I wanted to buy a battery here.”

The saleslady suggested that maybe the “Goodman jewlers beyond the land of Caribou Coffee, in the depths of the mall” could help.

They could not.  They also would not “service” watches that were bought elsewhere; and popping a new battery in was “servicing”.

The girl bit down on some comments about the dual nature of the word “serviceing”, and the exact nature of their appropriateness when applied to the situation.  She left the store having been polite, and was fairly certain she’d feel better about herself later because of it.  At least she could feel morally superior to snippy shop girls.  The shop girls rewarded her restraint by suggesting that she drive to a differnent "land of the mall" in the city of Edina, and find another store with a difficult to remember name.

The girl was speechless, which was probably best for everyone concerned.

But as she prepared to leave the great "land of  the mall”, she happened upon a small shop called “Rogers and Hollands”.  She entered the shop without much hope, but figured, “It can’t hurt to try”…and then immediately flinched and silently castigated herself for “jinxing it”.

She was greeted instantly by the fair maid, Heather, who asked, “How can I help you?”

“Do you, by chance, replace dead batteries in watches not purchased at your shop?”

“Yes.  It costs ten dollars.”, said the fair Heather, her smile glittering  in the florescent glow.

So the girl got the cheap-ass watch a new battery, and now she knows where she can go and get the next one, when it becomes necessary in the fullness of time.

And now, so do you.

And they lived happily ever after, or at least as long as the life expectancy of your average watch battery.