On our way home from the grocery store tonight, I said to Anne, "Have you heard of this Tumblr called I'm Remembering?"
"No," she said, "what's that?"
"It's all these images and things from the eighties and early nineties, and it's pretty awesome." In spite of myself, I added with a rather copious amount of enthusiasm, "Yesterday, I saw a picture of the Swatch phone!"
She looked at me, blankly.
"You didn't have a Swatch phone?" I couldn't believe it. I mean, we both grew up in Los Angeles in the 80s. Swatch phones were practically issued at the border when they gave you your smog alert reference sheet.
"Dude, I didn't even have a Swatch."
I nearly crashed the car. "You didn't have a Swatch?!"
"Nope."
Luckily for us and everyone around us, we had stopped at a red light. "How could you not have had a Swatch?!"
"Well, in my defense," she said, "it was hard to get one." She paused for a long moment, looked at me, and added, "since you were wearing them all."
I opened my mouth to retort, but before I could say anything, she concluded: "At the same time."
Check. And. Mate.
The Lexus behind us honked to let me know the light had apparently been green for some time. I slowly pulled through the intersection.
"Well played, Mrs. Wheaton," I said. "Well played."
At first it was because they were hard to get (and my parents wouldn't pay for one, so I had to save up). Then we visited Switzerland one summer, and I met someone who used to work for Swatch. He told me that the $50 Swatch (that was the typical price, IIRC) cost about $5 to make -- $3.50 in parts, $1.50 in labor.
After that, I didn't want one nearly as much.