Time Stopper

"Apple Watch." Apple. Apple Inc, 9 Sept. 2014. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.

The day had finally come, the day Apple was releasing the Apple Watch. I had arranged for it to arrive at my sister’s house in New Rochelle and I convinced my brother-in law David, to come visit and bring the watch straight to Israel. The UPS man arrived with the delivery at 11AM. By 5PM David had boarded his ELAL flight for Israel.

The flight started like any other– dinner, movies, and a nap. Then, suddenly in the middle of the night, the plane was hit by lightning while flying over the Atlantic Ocean. David felt the plane lurched forward. The engine screamed out at full throttle. The lights repeatedly flickered on and off. David had no idea what was going on. People were yelling. The pilot hurriedly announced to the passengers to immediately fasten their seatbelts. There was a sharp flash of light in the pitch black sky. The cabin was lit up like the middle of the day. And then, silence, as if nothing had occurred.

The one strange thing was, David’s iPad that he was watching a movie on seemed to have lost time (right in the middle of the movie he was watching). Everything seemed to disappear. It did turn on, but it was as if it was brand new. Everything was erased. My brother-in law was annoyed, but he figured he would see me in a few hours and I would be able to fix it. At noon, five hours later, his flight landed in Ben-Gurion airport. I was so excited I insisted on skipping school that day and went with my dad to Ben Gurion to meet him. After waiting an hour, David emerged from Customs. David was excited to be here, and while as I was happy to see him, what I really wanted was what he was carrying – MY Apple Watch.

For the past three weeks I had been working with the new Apple Watch SDK (Software Development Kit) developing a new watch app. I couldn't wait to actually try it on an actual device.

My dad couldn't drive fast enough on the road back to our apartment in Tel-Aviv. He dropped David and I off in front of our apartment and then went to go park the car. I rushed up stairs, went into my room, and opened the box. I couldn't believe it was finally mine. I took out the watch, and connected it up my computer to load my new app. I started playing with the controls. Suddenly, immediately after I turned the Digital Crown counter-clockwise, everything in the room stopped, like it was suddenly frozen. Everything, that is, except for me. Our TV froze. My dog Charlie who had just been running around in my room froze. I couldn't understand what was happening. I could move, but everything around me stopped. This was just a watch, right? I stood there, wondering whether I was dreaming. Could this be real?

The only thing moving, was a stopwatch that was running on the watch. It was counting down from 30. When it got to 0, everything began to move again. Everything returned to normal. I was shocked. I wasn't sure what to do. I was waiting for my dad to come back to tell him what had just happened.

Finally he came back. I told him the story and he looked at me like I had hit my head. “How is that possible” he said? I said “Here I’ll show you”. Once again I turned the Digital Crown counter-clockwise and everything froze – including my dad. The watch counted down from 30 again and then everything returned to normal. I said to him: “See what happened?” He looked at me and said: “What are you talking about? Nothing happened. One minute you put your hand on the watch and then took it off and asked me if I saw what I thought.”

Then I had an idea. I looped my hand around his arm so we were physically connected and I turned the Digital Crown again. This time everything seemed to stop in the house, except this time my dad saw it too. We both watched as the watch counted down from 30, after which things returned to normal. We looked at each other with wide eyes: “What on earth could this be? However magical the Apple Watch is, how could this watch seem to stop time?”

I mentioned the fact that I heard from my brother-in law that during his flight to Israel some strange things happened to the plane. Had that given the Apple Watch special powers? How could we take advantage of this special watch? My first thoughts were to pull some pranks on my sister and friends. Maybe I could use a marker and draw a mustache on my sister during those 30 seconds when time froze. Or maybe I could disable the computer of one of my “favorite” teachers.

My father said: “This is an amazing thing, but we must make sure we use it for good.”  I wasn't sure what to do, but I figured ideas would turn up. Later that afternoon, I was walking to a restaurant and saw an old man crossing the street. Suddenly, he began to trip. Instantly, I turned the Digital Crown and everything stopped. The man who was falling stopped short as he was about to fall. As the clock counted down, I ran over to him, and straightened him out. I walked away before the 30 seconds were over and the man continued walking as if nothing had happened.

“WOW” I said to myself, how many people can I help in 30 seconds? At that moment, I understood the Jewish proverb that “saving one life is like saving an entire world.” The watch, (this very, very strange watch), had not turned me into a superman, but it had given me 30-second windows to help people. Somehow, I felt that if I continued helping people the unexplained power of the watch would remain. I wondered what would happen if I used the watch to do something bad (Like lifting some money from a cash register.) I decided I never wanted to find out the answer to that question. So instead, I vowed to only use this amazing watch for good.