We got the beat

I would like to take a break from writing about my daughter to rhapsodize about my metronome. Yes, you read that correctly, my metronome.

Technically, my faithful rhythmic companion started its life as my brother’s metronome. A. E. Cohen and our childhood phone number, sans area code as 213 was the only area code worth considering back then, are clumsily but legibly etched on the verso. Over twenty-five years ago our parents bought each of us one of our own, but sometime in adolescence my pink and blue beauty disappeared and my affair with the reddish-orange one began. It’s been in my possession since I left for college fifteen years ago so, regardless of any claims my brother may make on this wondrous machine, it has lived with me over half its life.

It’s nothing fancy. A Seiko, quite portable but not petite. Beats per minute are arranged on a dial, it has a light only option and its only other feature is an A440. I have dropped it easily a hundred times. I think I have even thrown it across the room in a few passionate, arrhythmic moments. At our last apartment, the back fell off and stayed behind a bookcase in the second bedroom until we moved. Despite all this abuse and dust, it keeps on ticking. Since it entered our family I have probably gone through, collectively, a hundred walkmen, portable CD players, boom boxes, stereo components, telephones, answering machines, cell phones, alarm clocks, digital tuners, computers and so forth, yet my Seiko keeps on going.