It was 4:15 on a Saturday afternoon when I finally succumbed and bought Zoe a "Furby" doll.  She had been lobbying heavily for the furry little computerized alarm clock before it became the toy du jour, so on the day we went to KB Toys to pick one from the fresh litter "just arrived", she wore her favorite pink dress and her Doc Martins and needless to say, she was very delicious.  We arrived home from the toy store, and within minutes she had programmed the thing to fart and ask to be fed, and like a mother with a newborn, Zoe carried it around, talking to it, starring listlessly into it's eyes and caressing it's soft head.  Eventually I guess she took it with her into the bathroom, and apparently, while pulling up her tights, poor Zoe lost her grip on (poor) Furby who had jumped into the toilet.  Driven by a powerful maternal instinct 6 year old Zoe reached selflessly into the toilet and pulled Furby out by it's ear, right before the flush.  Furby is still a fixture on one of my shelves, as a reminder of sorts, up until now.  When Zoe and Ben brought me the dripping Furby for inspection I recall looking at my watch.  It was 4:55.  The Furby lasted less than an hour.
I've had a fascination with watches ever since Grandpa gave me my first watch on my 6th birthday.  I can't recall the wrapping it came in or the ribbon or the card but I vaguely remember the smell of it's leather strap, and the way one of the porcelain Mickey ears broke at it's tip and that I too cried like Zoe would cry: convinced that I had caused all of it's organs to escape and it's eternal hollowness was a direct result of my negligence.  In time Zoe would lose a cell phone in the same manner, and in time I would realize that most gifts have a life expectancy in direct proportion to the excitement quotient of the recipient divided by their approximate age.
I heard on a game show once that grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies for he fact that they share the same primary enemy, which explains why I had such enormous love for Grandma and Grandpa.
Grandpa was a fixture at 139 and more than often came by on his way home to 28 David Rd. from the market after getting getting off the pike at Exit 17.  As he sat down at the kitchen table my mother would go to the wood veneered cabinet where the milchekeh plates were stacked and she'd pull out the bottle of VO7, a shot glass, and with a L'chaim he would send the schnapps (he called it) down his throat, the glow would kick in, his raspy voice softened, he would begin an account of the day.

Today or yesterday it didn't matter, they were all the same; and as he would tell his stories, sitting like a puppy at the edge of the table with my hand holding his left hand down on the table mesmerized by the gleam of his gold wristwatch, I would trace my fingers over it's finely cut edges and he would utzel me with a loving touch; a twinkling eye and with the smell of Old English Leather blending with the VO, his thick accent mingled with the yiddish he used to make up for less than perfect english or to protect my ears, or to punctuate and animate some point in the formica countered world of my mother's kitchen, seated at the table; "so he says to me he says" being my all time favorite expression, as was he my only favorite grandpa…