6. Nomos Club | The Young Professional

Most people go through life second guessing their decisions. That’s why a lot of people turn to religion, astrology, or even other occult sciences for guidance in situations of doubt.  The Young Professional is no different, his luminary, since high school, has been numbers.  He’s a numerologist of sorts, although not in the extreme way that some numerologists believe in the divine relationship between numbers and coinciding event.  He’s focused on one number, his number, and its relationship with the destinies in his life.

It was a really hot summer day in his last high school year, a few weeks before graduation.  The Young Professional was sitting in English class, doodling on his folder, looking forward to being away from home at university, when he looked up at the wall calendar. He doesn’t know why he’s never seen it before, now it’s dawned on him. The first letter, from the month July to November, spells out his name!  J,A,S,O,N.  He carefully checks again, J,A,S,O,N.  How could he have missed this for the last 18 years of his life?  He wants to tell everyone in the class his new amazing discovery, though probably Mr. Mitchell wouldn’t appreciate it as much as he would.  And just as he began to contain himself from all this excitement, he realized another coincidence, that is, his birthday is in July and his name starts with J and it’s the only name that can be spelled out consecutively on the calendar!  What are the odds? This can’t be merely a coincidence can it? It must have been fate that his parents named him after a Greek mythological hero and leader of the Argonauts (actually they just flipped a coin between that and David, the masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture)!  This must be a sign! He had always knew his birthday was special, he was born on a day which separates the year right in the middle, not to mention he was also born on the same day as Princess Diana (royalty), Liv Tyler (his current celebrity crush), and Pamela Anderson (need he say more?). 

Ever since that day many summers ago, The Young Professional became semi-unhealthily obsessed with his birthday.  Of course he wouldn’t do anything tacky or pedestrian, like ordering vanity plates for his car or selecting a cell phone number with those digits.  He would see the numbers as signs of divine intervention (of sorts), for example if those digits corresponded with a certain item on a restaurant menu, he would order that, or he would choose a hotel room because it had his birthday digits. Unsurprisingly (at least to him), till now things have really worked out favorably.  After his graduation from the University of North Dakota (area code 701!), his life as a consultant with one of the big 5s has been one without complaints.  It is with this lightness in his stride on a cold winter day when he passed by a jeweler in a small town called Erlangen in Germany, where he was on his first overseas assignment, that the Nomos Club caught his eye.  He’s not a watch aficionado, in fact, quite far from it.  He’s been wearing a hand me down Seiko from his father ever since graduation from university.  But the simplicity of the Nomos really spoke to him, especially the size of the case, at 36mm, it’s much more pleasing to the eye than those monstrous clocks on wrists people seem to favor presently.  The young professional went inside the store and asked to see the watch in the display.  The old salesman, who he presumes to be the owner, didn’t speak English.  Perhaps this is a sign? He thinks to himself.  He didn’t really need a new watch and was too lazy to gesture.  Just as he was about to leave, a young woman’s voice calls after him ‘Can I help you?’ He turns around to see an unconventionally striking woman about his age.  She is a bit taller than him, which he liked.  ‘Yes, I would like to see that little watch with the brown leather straps, the one next to the square ones.’, he points to the display as he tells her. ‘Yes, the Nomos Club with the shell cordovan. Sure, I’ll get that for you, please take a seat, and sorry, my grandfather doesn’t speak much English.’. She puts on a pair of white gloves and transfers the watch from the display to a velvet viewing pad and lays it in front of him.  He’s never been to a proper jeweler before, and this presentation of the watch just seems a bit showy and elaborate to him. Oh well you might as well try it on, just to be polite.  He was embarrassed to take his beat up old Seiko off in front of the sales person, so he hid it under his sweater sleeve on his left arm and proceeds to put the watch on his right wrist with his left hand.  He couldn’t manage, it was such an awkward movement, he’s making a fool of himself he thought, beads of sweat begin to form on his forehead.  ‘Let me help you’, she says in perfect English without a hint of German accent.  She had to lean in to help him put on the watch and he could smile her very pleasant perfume as she gently tucks her soft shoulder length blond hair behind her right ear to not get in his face. ‘Your English is very good,’ he says to her as she’s putting the watch on, hoping to break the awkward silence and the close proximity of their faces.  ‘Thanks, so is yours!’ she says jokingly.  You are an idiot, The Young Professional thinks to himself, for making such a patronizing comment. Sensing his silent but nevertheless guilty plea, she adds, ‘well actually I’m studying English here at the university.’ ‘Oh then that explains it’ was all that he could mutter.  It seemed like an eternity, but she was finally finished.  The Nomos is now comfortably and handsomely resting on this slender wrist.  And as he is admiring this beautiful specimen of a watch, he took a quick and subtle look at the price tag and was relieved that it wasn’t as expensive as he thought.  It’s certainly a luxury, but still something he could afford, even on his fresh graduate’s salary.  She tells him a few facts about the watch, how the company Nomos is from a famous German watch making town called Glashuette in the state of Saxony, and that the company is special, in that they make their own movements. ‘In this particle model, the Club 701, is their Alpha movement’, she points out.  ‘Sorry, what is the model of this watch again?’ he asks her almost breathlessly.  ‘It’s the Club 701’, she repeats.  ‘That’s my birthday, July 1^st’. ‘Well then I guess you were meant to have it’. She says cheekily.

The Young Professional, of course, made the purchase.  And shortly after that, he returned to the jeweler, officially with the intention of wanting to thank her for her assistance with the watch, which he has been happily showing off to his German colleagues, to universal approval. He adds, rather sheepishly, that since he would be in town for a few months and didn’t have any friends, wondered if she would have time to show him around her lovely town and have a coffee?  ‘I don’t drink coffee’, she says matter-of-factly. Dejected, he heart sinks. ‘But I love tea, and there’s a nice tea house around the corner’. She quickly adds.  ‘And by the way, my name is Rebecca’ she says as she cheerfully extends her hand. He takes her hand firmly in his and says, ‘I’m… if you spell out the first letter of July to November…’