A Review of the Apple Watch That My Brother Has But Won’t Let Me See

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Brandon McLaughlin in Products, Reviews // 0 Comments

I’ve wanted an Apple Watch since the moment I knew the thing existed. As soon as I saw the product announcement I shot to my feet and shouted, “Yes! That’s mine! I want and need an Apple Watch in my life immediately!”

Everyone in the hospital waiting room that I happened to be in at the time stared at me, but I was undeterred. From that moment on I devoured every bit of information I could about the watch, determined to add it to my collection. I am an avid consumer of Apple products, you see, so the company’s new watch was sure to be a perfect fit.

Ha ha, get it? Because of how wonderfully the Apple Watch will “fit” on my wrist.

Anyway, now that the watch is actually out, I’ve run into a slight problem. Apparently the PR guys at The Double Thumb weren’t able to grease enough palms to score me a review model. Since I was counting on their dumb asses, I neglected to order a watch of my own. The watches are completely sold out at all the stores near me and I am devastated.

Somehow, my idiot brother Russel managed to get his hands on one. The only problem now is that he won’t let me see it. Unfortunately for me, if I still wanted to review this thing I was going to have to figure out how to cope.

Part 1 – Denial

“I can’t believe that you got one and I didn’t,” I said, staring at the sleek, glimmering Apple Watch that adorned my brother’s fat wrist.

I had booked it over to his house as soon as I found out he had managed to obtain a watch, and now I was doing everything I could to weasel him out of it.

“No looking!” he shouted, yanking his arm away. He then hid the watch from my view by shoving it deep into a bucket of KFC.

I cringed. “This is insane. You of all people, you great cow. How did you manage to get an Apple Watch before I did?”

Russel shrugged. “Pre-ordered it. Pretty easy. Too bad your dumb fancy review company couldn’t comp one for you. It’s kind of the best gizmo I’ve ever seen.”

The best gizmo he had ever seen.

And here he sat drowning it in a bucket of shitty chicken goop.

“I just can’t believe this,” I said.

Part 2 – Anger

“This is my livelihood, for godsakes!” I shouted as I swung a broken bottle at my brother’s gut. “I review stuff! It’s what I do! Just let me look at the damn thing!”

We were a few beers deep at this point in the evening, and I’d had just about enough of his watch-withholding smugness. Also I don’t react very well to alcohol.

Russel held me in place as he twisted the bottle out of my grasp and tossed it deftly into the trash can across the kitchen. I flailed against him, but it was no use.

“You son of a bitch!” I shouted, then frowned when I realized that I had offended myself there too.

He shoved me backwards and I lost my balance. My butt hit the hard tile of the kitchen floor. Russel chuckled and went to go crack open another beer. I folded my arms and pouted on the ground.

“How are you so strong?!” I screeched.

“Pumping iron, bro,” he said, walking over to a set of free weights he had last laid to rest atop an old pizza box. He treated me to a little wave of his watch-adorned wrist. “This thing reads my heart rate and shit, so now I can do fitness way better.”

My eyes narrowed into furious slits, naught but malice in my heart. “You’ve never exercised a day in your life before now.”

He swung the barbell back and forth around his torso. “I haven’t had a reason to! Apple Watch, bro: it makes me want to be a better man!”

That night, as I stood over my sleeping brother with a meat cleaver in my hands, I paused only very briefly to consider the morality of my murderous intentions. Then a red haze of Apple Watch promotional videos swam across my vision and I brought the knife down.

Part 3 – Bargaining

“YOU GONNA KILL ME, HUH BRANDON?! YOU GONNA KILL ME OVER A STUPID WRISTWATCH?!”

Turns out Russel had been awake during my attempted fratricide. He’d rolled away from my knife at the last possible second and then leaped upon me before I could react. Now he held me upside down by the ankles over the balcony of his apartment like a gangster shakedown.

“Oh God I’m sorry!” I said, my voice squealing like a dying hamster. “I wasn’t really trying to kill you, Russel, I promise! Please, can we just talk about this rationally? I won’t look at your Apple Watch ever again! I don’t even care about the thing any more!”

Russel cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are you sure? You swear you’ll stop being an envious little bitch?”

I felt the increased pressure on my temples as the blood rushed to my head. I tried not to think about the hard pavement three stories down. The wind swirled around us, the only cushion I would receive if Russel decided to let me go. Cars stopped and started on the street below. A pedestrian or two glanced upwards at us then kept walking.

Then I started blubbering again. “Oh God, at least tell me what model it is! Sport? Stainless steel? 18-karat gold? Damn you, how much did you pay for it?!”

“I didn’t pay for it,” he said.

I stopped floundering and stared at him, my eyes bugging out. “What do you mean you didn’t pay for it?”

He shrugged. “Mom bought it for me.”

Part 4 – Depression

Four minutes later I lay on my brother’s couch, bawling my eyes out. He sat next to me, eating his chicken and occasionally croaking out an extremely sarcastic, “There there.”

I ignored him, lost in my own grief. The concept of the Apple Watch had gripped me with such visceral immediacy that I had never for a moment imagined that I could be denied the possession of one. I was Prometheus, enjoying my time flying so close to the sun that I forgot I had to roll a giant boulder up a hill.

I don’t know. I’m probably mixing up my mythological analogies here, but cut me some slack. I’m in mourning, so my brain isn’t working properly. The point is: where once I thought myself so close to a life of glorious luxury, now I have fallen as far as a man can fall.

And to have my brother flaunt it all in my face was crushing.

“Mom bought you an Apple Watch, but not me,” I said. “Life is an unfair, cruel, sadistic bitch.”

“She thought you were getting one from your fancy Double Thumb outfit. So she got me one so I didn’t feel left out. You know how she is. Always buying us the same shirts for Christmas.”

I looked up to see his wicked smirk dancing across his face. I said, “I don’t think you understand how much this watch means to me.”

He cocked his head and thought about that for a while. Then he shrugged and said, “Nah, I understand. That’s what makes it so fun.”

He shoved his hand back into the chicken bucket.