The Real Life Adventures of Girl vs. Nature

I recently turned 44, and to celebrate my fabulous husband gave me a watch.

Actually, he bought more than one, starting with the kind he thought I ought to wear and eventually ending with the one I actually would.

This was no ordinary watch. It was traditional, with a wide leather band reminiscent of a bomber jacket. It was substantial. It was totally butch. And it was Swiss.

Thankfully, it also came with a warranty, because less than two weeks into life on my wrist, it stopped keeping time (although the second hand is still dutifully making its rounds).

And while this turn of events saddens me deeply, it is in no way surprising: I have been frying watches since 1978, when I was hit by lightning while venturing up the Mount of the Holy Cross with a gaggle of Girl Scouts.

This was no ordinary accident; it was Girl vs. Nature.

I am still standing, but no watch has ever survived being strapped to me, and that's saying something because in the year leading up to the Mountain Top Incident, I survived another Girl vs. Nature smack down and my watch was the winner.

In 1977, I was attacked by a killer horse. Or maybe it was just Horse Gone Wild. It's hard to say. But either way, I started out riding the horse and ended up flat on my back, unconscious, with the horse thrashing wildly beside me in an effort to get right-side-up and back on her feet. Stunningly, my skull was not broken, but I had multiple concussions and a broken jaw. And, although my arm was both compound fractured and splintered into 11 pieces, my Timex was in tact.

My mother said this was to be expected; back then, Timex commercials featured real life disaster stories with people like me, who would hold up their surviving watches and declare: "It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'." She thought I should be in an ad.

It was not meant to be, however. My trusty timepiece met a dramatic end just a few months later, sometime between the blue haze of the lightning bolt and the hail storm and the rainbow that followed.

My next Timex never worked. Nor did any of the watches that followed.

It would be ten years before I would learn that this is not an uncommon consequence of being hit by lightning. I've since heard that no one who's had a near-death experience can wear a watch.

After about 4 dozen watches and 20 years, I declared Nature the winner and threw in the towel. Until recently.

Then I decided I needed a watch. A very specific watch. It had to be a women's design, but substantial and bold. With a leather strap. And big enough to read with my aging eyes.

This was a rather surprising impulse. Irrational. Doomed to fail. And yet, inspired by something completely endearing--an email from the most brilliant of colleagues addressing me as "Wonder Woman."

I realize in retrospect that I do indeed want to be Wonder Woman, and I want a watch wide enough and tough enough to deflect all of life's bullets. But you can't, as they say, fool Mother Nature.

Soon, my wonderful birthday watch will be in its magnificent orange box headed home to Switzerland, where the master watchmakers will undoubtedly open it up and declare: "C'est increable! C'est impossible!" By then, my $29.99 on-clearance-at-the-discount-store replacement will be finished as well.

Maybe I am part Wonder Woman; I do seem to have my very own super power: Electro Magnetic Girl Fries Electronics and Brings Down Computer Systems in a Single Stroke! But apparently, I'll have to embrace traditional cuff braclets; I'll never be able to dress the part wearing a watch no matter how perfect it might look.

Maybe it's not the look. Maybe Girl vs. Nature is really about iterative transformation and the ways that we stay connected, like Spiderman, to the mysterious power of Nature that threaten to overwhelm us.

I am, after all, still standing. And late. Again.