Why is it that some of us become techies, and the rest of us take another route?
I trace my decision to my Uncle Ed.
Ed would grow up to be a hotshot R&D engineer, and, as always happens in these
cases, he had any girl he wanted. I wound up an embittered freelance writer. For
that I blame my Uncle Ed.
When I was 14, Ed was 10. This is perfectly possible, if you stop and think about
it. But it seemed at the time to violate a law of nature, and I held a sort of
genealogical grievance against Uncle Ed from the moment I learned he existed.
Anyway, I like to think I was perfectly capable of becoming a tech-oriented
person. I learned Morse code in the Boy Scouts. I built Pinewood Derby cars that
actually rolled. I even created a car-battery-powered lighting system for a fort
I set up in an apple tree in our back yard--before it caught fire. Some of the
kids in the neighborhood looked at me with that deferential expression we reserve
for people who can tell positive from negative. I was a made kid--almost.
Then I met Ed. He wore a pocket protector and carried a slide rule everywhere. He
subscribed to the quarterly Allied Electronics catalog, the one you order
electronic kits from. Even at age nine he buttoned his top shirt button. And he
was always pushing his taped-together glasses up the bridge of his nose.
I don't claim to be any kind of prophet, but I was sensible enough to intuit that
Ed, and not I, represented the wave of the future. Four years my junior, he
intimidated the hell out of me.
We never got along. Not that we fought, but every time we got together, it was
for a miserable bout of one-upmanship. I would show him the birdhouse I'd pasted
together, or the bike I'd spray-painted, and he would whip out blueprints for a
ham radio voice-recognition project.
But the moment that stands out for me was at his place. He'd revamped the
electricity in his parents' house so that every room had a push-button intercom
and stereo tweeters. He installed a central woofer system in the furnace room. He
asked if I'd like to hear some music, and I said "Sure."
We opened the cabinet housing the console stereo he'd assembled and soldered
together, and he showed off the precision counterweighting on the tone arm,
lifting the rubber mat on the turntable to reveal the synchromeshed gearbelt. He
whirled the 3-inch AM dial, bringing in faraway stations with a clarity that made
our crummy RCA tabletop system sound like a Campbell's soup can full of
flip-tabs.
"Neat," I said, defeated.
"So what do you want to hear?" Ed asked. "You pick."
Most of the LPs were things his mom liked--Broadway musicals, Lawrence Welk. But I
found one unlikely treasure, the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band." And it was in mint condition, still in its shrink-wrap, and not a
hair-scratch on the gleaming vinyl.
"How about this?" I begged.
He looked at it for a second, and blinked languidly. "No, let's play this," he
said, and plucked Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass' "Whipped Cream and Other
Delights" from the wire record rack.
"No," I whimpered, as I felt my opportunity slip away. The house soon filled with
the cheery sound of ersatz Mexican trumpeting.
In the competition to be king of the TechnoHill, I knew when I was licked. And
that is how it's been ever since.
Michael Finley is America's Best Loved
Futurist®.
