April 2003
By Tom Snyder
Maturity and experience tell us not to go to a boat store when snow is falling. This is more profound than wisdom advising us to avoid supermarket shopping when hungry, because this other hunger leans more toward longing. I looked up the word “longing” in my dictionary, which lists definition number three as follows: “a state of mind in which one hears internal dialog fragments such as, “… and if I had __________, then I’d be happy. I really, really would. No, I really would.” The tragedy of longing during a snowstorm at a boat store is that one might easily decide that if one had little leather steering gloves one would be finally truly happy. That said, let me shift gears to an entirely unrelated story.
The snow was falling horizontally and cars were headed home in the late afternoon. I sat in my parked car at work and thought to myself (and this should in no way suggest that I was feeling anything but deeply content), “What’s the use of living? Why are we here on Earth? Will I ever sail again?” So I decided to drop in on a little chandlery about 85 miles away. I was fine. Honestly.
A scant two hours later I was chatting with 19-year-olds who man the aisles of Wrest Marine (I have altered the name of the store because to come right out and say West Marine is a bit on the nose.) These young sales folk are superb. And such good listeners!
I didn’t get a cart; I didn’t grab a basket, because I was there for social reasons. If we can’t talk to one another, we are but animals. While one young fellow, Ben, once employee-of-the-week, was telling me about a very tricky landlord situation, I walked over to a stunning navigator’s watch in a rotating point-of-purchase-display. This was the “Nine Hundred-Function Admiral Digital Timepiece”. Nine hundred was no exaggeration, as I discovered when Ben reluctantly broke open the Admiral packaging. Do the words “GPS,” “barometer,” “compass,” “tide index,” and “race computer” begin to paint a picture? God, this was the coolest watch I’d ever seen. It would warn the wearer of cross-track error, warn of catastrophic falling mercury, warn of course deviation, warn of low tide conditions, and warn of line bias problems at the start of a race. I will assume that you think I am making this up because no watch on God’s earth could possibly fulfill so many dreams. But I am not making this up. And I absolutely had to have it. This watch would make me very happy, and a better sailor, too.
I enlisted Ben’s perspective in making a decision. Should I spend $400 for a watch that would make me so very, very happy? He was quick to come up with just the right questions. “Do you love your family enough to want to ensure their safety in a wide range of boating situations?” I didn’t just dive in with a knee-jerk answer. “No,” I finally said. “I care about them at least that much.” Next he asked me if quality mattered to me. I admitted that I preferred quality. Ben’s final question caught me by surprise, because it was hardly a question at all. He asked me if I wondered how good the watch would look on my arm. The guy was uncanny, because I was just wondering that myself. We both agreed, moments later, that I looked fine wearing an Admiral.
The money hurt, though. Four hundred dollars is a lot, even for something that would be the last thing I would ever have to buy to make me completely happy once and for all. Life lesson here – when something means enough, you will find a way. And I did. I decided to skip lunches every Monday for a year, which would generate about $300. The balance I would make up by cutting back on 3,000-mile oil changes for my car. The new cars really don’t need much oil, and Ben backed me up on this one.
In the car on the way home, I dealt immediately with PPD syndrome, because if you wait until it overtakes you, the game is over. Remember PPD does not last forever, but in a severe onset it can make you turn back. I used two conventional strategies: 1) play the radio very loud to avoid introspection and 2) keep the mouth in a taut, wide smile to control autonomic functions. The two-hour drive home went by in what seemed exactly like two hours, and I won the battle against post-purchase despair with only slight cramping.
The final leg of the journey can be the most perilous – the leg where one shows one’s spouse what one has just purchased. Again, two tested strategies. 1) Act naturally, and 2) carefully monitor the rising pitch of your voice when describing features and benefits. The point is to share your joy without getting squeaky. Anyway, my wife hid from me how much she loved the Nine Hundred-Function Admiral Digital Timepiece. Her little act was rather transparent but ultimately adorable. Poor kid – she clearly wanted one too, and with her birthday a month away, it could happen.
I sat up late that night, the snow outside now more vertical than horizontal. My watch felt heavy with promise. (Literally. With all of those sensors we are looking at just under a pound.) I would soon be sailing in situations in which a man with fewer watch functions would be in great peril, and I was very, very, rather happy.
Tom Snyder sails out of Peaks Island, Maine.
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