My First Watch Was a Burger King Toy. I've Never Loved One More.

I didn't grow up in a watch family. Nobody passed down a Rolex. There was no grandfather with an Omega on his wrist and a story to go with it. My introduction to watches came through a Kids Club meal and a four-year-old's complete inability to leave something alone.

It was 1998. Burger King was running a promotion tied to The Rugrats Movie. For $1.99 with your Kids Club meal you could get one of four watches. Angelica, Chuckie, Reptar, or Tommy. I got Tommy. The Talking Tommy, to be exact. Blue band, Tommy Pickles on the face, and a button on the side that when pressed would announce to everyone in earshot: "A baby's gotta do what a baby's gotta do."

I pressed that button constantly. In the car. At the dinner table. During church. My family were patient people. They were tested.

But here's the thing. I wore that watch every single day. Not because anyone told me to. Not because it was cool. Because it was mine, it was on my wrist, and I loved it. The battery eventually died and I was genuinely upset about it in the way only a kid can be upset about something that costs two dollars.

That watch taught me something I wouldn't be able to articulate for another twenty years. There's something about having a watch on your wrist that just feels right.

Middle school brought an upgrade. A Fossil. University of Oklahoma themed, crimson and cream dial, the OU logo on the face. If you know, you know. If you don't, just understand that in Oklahoma, OU is not a preference. It's a religion. That watch felt serious to me. It felt like a grown-up thing to own.

I lost it. Somewhere between classes and practice and being thirteen and irresponsible, it disappeared. I looked everywhere. It was gone.

I was devastated in a way that surprised me. It was just a watch. But it wasn't, really. It never is.

That feeling stuck with me longer than it had any right to. I've thought about it more than once as an adult, usually when I'm reading about a reference that got away at auction or a grail that sold before someone could pull the trigger.

Collectors talk a lot about the watches they own. They don't talk enough about the ones they lost.

That's part of why I started The Dial. Not to be another publication that tells you what launched at Watches & Wonders or ranks the best dive watches for the fifth year running. But to write honestly about what it actually means to be someone who cares about watches. Where that starts, what it costs, what it feels like, and why it matters more than it probably should.

My first watch was a Burger King toy. I've been hooked ever since.

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