Stranger than Fiction

Yes. Before I saw the movie at the cheapest theatre in town I was attracted to the Timex ironman watch that is featured there in.

I saw it at Meijer (the watch not the movie). It was in a display with about twenty other identical watches. The card board shipper had the words (or something very close)"As featured in the Motion Picture : Stranger than Fiction." There may or may not have been a picture of Will Farrell included.

It did not however have any indication of price listed on it or printed around it. No one evidently ever works in the jewelry department, because every time I went there wasn't a single person I could seek out for assistance. I didn't just visit it once. I browsed them on several occasions. Finally I walked one over to a price scanner.

Located throughout the store are small electronic devices that incorporate LCD displays and laser eyes to identify and decipher prices of unmarked objects. More common than not these devices are known to be out of order or prompting you to complete menial tasks over and over again. "Please scan the item now." That is a famous request that beams unblinkingly from most monitors after several moments of strategic positioning of the items bar code in the eerie red light that is emitted from the laser at the base of the device. This is classic broken price checker behavior.

When I eventually learned of the MSRP for the watches that I'd been coveting for several weeks I was devastated. I'd never paid more than $20.00 for a wrist watch. (I never said I was an extremely classy person.) Meijer wants a person to pay $67.93 or some such amount.

I am a big person. I have big body parts. I know that a variety of fashionable and occasionally affordable wrist watches and even alternative wrist accessories will not fit on me. To avoid buying something and returning it when it doesn't fit, some establishments allow you the luxury of trying items on. Once I found the jewelry department manned by three people. On that same day they were having a sale for all watches. I asked to try it on and they allowed me to. To my surprise it fit.

I didn't buy the watch at Meijer. At this point the store only had two left and they (probably through the luxury of patrons trying the time pieces on) looked well worn.

I bought it online at a discounted price of something less than $67. The sale at Meijer did not change my feelings about the molestation that had at some point happened to the two last watches they had. I felt much more content buying it online at Amazon.com where it's past will stay hidden from me forever.

When I ended up seeing the movie on the weekend of my birthday I was pleased that while the watch in the movie was more impressive than the version I currently own, the movie itself was very enjoyable to me. It was about writing. It was about love. It was about death and it barely had a happy ending. Kind of like the pleasures derived from dark chocolate. It's so good because it dances on the edge between satisfying and questionably not quite hitting the spot.