Curious George: He's on track and on time!

Thank you so much to all of you who helped me with my watch! I took every suggestion and tried them out. Nothing worked. The watch was clearly running, but it simply would not set. No amount of button poking made any difference.

So a few minutes ago I took George out to the toolbox in the garage. My thought was to remove the battery and reinstall it, thinking that would make it go back to setting mode. But when I opened the back, the whole inside slipped out, not just the back to reveal the battery. I picked it up and saw some little metal flanges on the side. Aha, I said (probably out loud, since I do talk to myself), those are the points that make contact when you push the buttons. So I tried pushing them with a tiny screwdriver. Lo and behold, in a couple of minutes I had set the time and the date (which must be what the 1721 was for, though I'm not too sure what month would correspond to 17). And the :00 was for seconds, which are now ticking merrily away.

I think perhaps what happened was, when I put it together after installing the battery I probably got it slightly whopperjawed in the case, so the buttons weren't hitting the flanges quite right. It's a theory, anyway. Or maybe it's just a dud watch that no one has ever been able to set. After all, I only paid fifty cents for it! At least I've now had the opportunity to use the words "whopperjawed" and "flanges" in the same sentence.

That's got to be worth something!