Chronically On Time.

My mother was always up. Before the sun, before the birds. Before anyone else had the right to be awake, she was. She kept to time like it was stitched into her skin, and if you grew up in her house, you knew to do the same. It felt like a sin to be late, to still be in bed when the day had already begun. Time was never to be wasted, never to be ignored. You did not wake up late. You did not arrive late. You did not drag your feet when it was time to move. Punctuality was not just a habit; it was discipline, and discipline was survival. So I learned. I learned so well that I took it too far. I became the child who was always first to show up. First to arrive at school, first to be seated in church, first to step into a room when an event had barely even begun. It became second nature. There was no question about it. I was just always on time.

It didn’t go unnoticed. In junior school, for every year I spent there, they gave me a prize for being the most punctual student. I didn’t think it was anything special, but someone must have, because one day, they decided to make it official. Time Keeper. The one in charge of time. It was strange. Everyone else got these fancy-sounding prefect roles ; Head Boy, Social Prefect, Library Prefect , but me? They gave me a bell and a clock and told me it was my duty to remind the world that time was moving. It felt funny at first, almost like a joke. But then it settled into me, like something I had always known but never named. The teachers would be teaching, lost in their lessons, and it was my job to check the time. It was my job to remind them that time was bigger than whatever they were doing, that it would move with or without them.

Let me tell you why this was so significant.

I have never really been an exceptional child. Not the smartest, not the most talented, not the one who always had the right answers or the one teachers spoke about in staff meetings with pride. I was not dull either. I was just there. But the clock, the bell? That was mine. That was my place. My own carved-out space in the world. In a sea of students, I had a function. And I held onto it like it was the most important thing in the world.

Until the day I came late.

It was just once. A small mistake. But Mr. Olaniyi did not care. Because how could the keeper of time betray time itself? He punished me so much that by the end of it, I was sure I had learned my lesson for a lifetime. It couldn’t be possible. It couldn’t be said that the Prefect in charge of time had arrived late.

In senior school, a boy I liked gave me a black wristwatch. I remember it vividly. Simple, sleek, something I would have picked for myself. It sat so perfectly on my wrist that I started looking at my arm differently, like it had always been missing something. I would stare at it all the time, adjusting the straps, twisting my wrist back and forth, watching the light hit the glass. I was wearing it one morning during devotion, sitting close to my mother, lost in thought, lost in the quiet rhythm of checking the time. And then ,  gbam! A slap across my face. Sharp, unexpected. The sting of it traveled through my whole body. She didn’t even have to say anything. The message was clear. Why was I staring at my wrist when there was a prayer to be said? But she didn’t understand. It wasn’t really about looking at my watch. It was about knowing. Measuring. Waiting. For school, for the bell, for the moment I could stand up and move.

Still in senior school, I read the news on assembly ground every Friday. Hundreds of students staring, their faces blurring into one mass of eyes, ears, mouths. And even then, time was of the essence. The news had to start at the right time and end at the right time. Because senior school was large, and I was not the kind of student who could shine in it. I was not the best at anything, not the kind to stand out in a crowd. But my writing and my timekeeping made space for me. Out of everything else, they gave me something to hold on to. My place. My time. My space.

Now, when I think of gifts for people, I think of watches too. I don’t know why. It just comes naturally. “They would want to check the time too,” I think. It seems like the only logical thing. Like something everyone should care about as much as I do.

In every shape, sense, style, and form, watches mean something to me. I do not feel complete without them. I have to check the time. I have to wear them. On the left wrist. Almost always.

I have worn a simple, functional watch almost every single day of my life that I have stepped out. It is my piece. My thing. My place. My space.