I See Dead People, Part One

A few weeks ago my watch stopped. I always buy Timexes. I'm not sure of the spelling, but I always buy them. I think (read: hope) that even if I was a gazillionaire, I wouldn't spend $25,000 on a Vacheron or Patec Phillippe. A $40.00 Timex works just fine. Well, because I spent most of my adult life toiling away in the jewelry industry, I just could not bring myself to go to some local jeweler and let him charge me $20.00 to change the battery in a $40.00 watch. So I pried open the back, took out the battery, brought it to Radio Shack and bought a replacement for about five bucks. Piece of cake. Then I came home and totally screwed up trying to put the darn thing in. I couldn't get it to make contact and then I couldn't get the back to close. I guess my plans to become a master watchmaker will have to be put on hold indefinitely. I needed to go into the city to run some errands that week anyway, so I figured I'd bring the watch in to my old buddy Leva the watchmaker. He always charged me $5.00 to change a battery. I also brought a few other watches that weren't working. When I got there he commented that he hadn't seen me for a very long time, was everything okay? That's when I told him about the year I've had (of course you know I'm the shy, reserved type who would never, ever have brought it up had he not asked me, right? Right??). That's when he asked me if I had heard about Luzer. I didn't know who Luzer was. In the booth right next to Leva in the jewelry exchange there's a company called Orange Findings. They sell findings (earring posts, prong settings, bezels, etc.) to jewelers. I've bought some little pitchifkes* there over the years, so I knew all the guys there. I always assumed that they called it "Orange Findings" because one of the people there, presumably an owner, was a redhead with very orange hair. He was a chassidic guy who was very knowledgeable and helpful. Well, it turns out that his name was Luzer. In all the years I'd been coming there, I never knew his name. So I told Leva no, I hadn't heard about Luzer, what about him? That's when I noticed Luzer wasn't in his booth. "he die," said Leva in his heavy Russian accent. I was floored. Leva told me that Luzer was 56 and had been sick for a while. He used to come over to Leva's booth and literally cry to him that he was going to die. And he did. As you know if you've been following this blog for a while, almost everything that happens to me lately I interpret as some kind of message from above. Why did my watch happen to stop on that particular day? Those batteries last a very, very long time. And why did I mess up changing the battery and therefore have to go to Leva? Was it because G-d wanted me to hear about Luzer and count my myriad blessings? Well, I know what I think...what do you think?

*pitchifkes = um, a yiddishism that's hard to translate. I guess the closest would be small, mostly insignificant things.