How Did a Paper Strip Become a Pretend Wristwatch?

In some children's play during the 1960s and 1970s, a “wristwatch” could begin as a strip of scrap paper. A child cut exercise-book or wrapping paper into a band, drew a circular face in the middle, added marks and two hands, then pasted the ends together or joined them with small slots. Methods varied between places and households. Some children attached a separate paper face; others simply drew straight onto the band.

The watch could not run, of course, but the game began as soon as it went onto a wrist. One child lifted an arm and asked the time; another supplied an answer. They might then pretend to catch a train, sell tickets, take a class roll or compare whose dial looked most convincing. The time did not come from a mechanism. It came from agreement: if someone declared that it was eight o'clock, the group could continue the game as though it were.

This little object belonged to its material setting. Wristwatches were valued household goods rather than casual children's possessions, while paper could be recovered from used notebooks and packaging. Sweat softened the band and the join soon tore, but another could be drawn without much cost. Its worth lay less in faithful imitation than in borrowing the schedules, roles and imagined authority of adult life. General recollection can show that the play existed; it cannot establish that every region or every child made the same paper watch.

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