curtyengst

Here's a bit from the archives to celebrate Mother's Day.

A while back I got one of those e-mails from a friend of mine that asks a bunch of questions about me, and I’m supposed to answer the questions and send it to everybody on my mailing list. You’ve probably gotten at least one, so you probably know the drill. One of the questions that was interesting to me was this one: “What is your best childhood memory?” It took me a while to think of an answer. It wasn’t that I had a bad childhood; far from it. There were just so many, and I felt like I needed to pick a really good one. So here was my answer: “My first tape recorder.”

I figured this was good because it most reflected something of a watershed moment in my life. And the circumstances behind it make for a good story too, so I thought I’d use this opportunity to share it with you.

I was about seven or eight years old and in second grade back in the mid-seventies. I was friends with a kid who lived up the hill from us and was often over at his house. As far as I remember, his father managed a construction supply company, and they seemed well off enough. My friend never seemed to need anything and certainly seemed to want for very little. Anyway, one of his gadgets that fascinated me the most was his tape recorder. Just the fact that he had his own tape recorder was pretty remarkable to me. By today’s standards the thing would easily be regarded as primitive, but for a second-grader in the mid-seventies, it was cutting edge technology. It was a Panasonic, and it had a big shiny silver and black case. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world that he could record anything and play it back at will! I thought, “I’ve got to get me one of these.” Then I thought, “There’s no way my parents will waste good money on something like that.”

Some time after this, I got dragged to the local department store by my mother for another painfully boring shopping excursion. This place was sort of the Wal-mart of its day. While my mother did her shopping, I wandered over to the electronics department. There in a glass display case I saw a veritable cornucopia of portable tape recorders. Well, O.K., there were maybe seven or eight different ones, but hey, I was only eight. They were lined up from left to right according to price, with the most expensive ones on the left. Naturally, that’s where I found the same exact one my friend had. At the time, I think it cost about $30, which to an eight-year-old in 1977 was roughly equivalent to the national debt. On the other end of the display, the cheapest one in the case was a small green plastic little tape recorder. It cost about $14. Even that was well out of my price range. I knew my parents weren’t going to go for it, so I decided then and there I would simply have to save up for it.

At the time, my father would pay us a small allowance for chores around the house, so I knew I had that. But where was I going to come up with the rest? As the next several months unfolded, I would scrape together anything I could. I would dig through the furniture, looking for loose change. I would even slip into the laundry room and take the change my mother had found in my father’s pants and left on the dryer. You won’t tell, will you? Occasionally, I would return to the department store with my mother and make tracks for that display case, just to gawk at that cheap, green, plastic Holy Grail. “She will be mine. Oh, yes! She will be mine!”

I remember the night I counted my savings and discovered that I had finally saved enough to buy the tape recorder. My hands were shaking as I recounted the money, making sure I had reached that magic figure of $14. There followed days of incessant badgering as I tried to get my mother to take me back to the store. Finally, the blessed day arrived. I was about to part with every nickel I had to my name. I dragged my mother to the display case and tapped the glass between myself and my prize.

My mother looked at it with that look mothers get. You know the look. “Is that the one you want?”

“Uhh….yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

Was she serious? Where had she been for the last several months? I was practically licking the glass, and she’s asking me if it’s what I want?? The pregnant pause after that left me surprisingly hesitant. Mothers have that power. They can ask the simplest question and have you doing some serious soul searching over what should be a relatively simple thing. It was only a tape recorder.

“Which one does your friend have?” she asked.

Where was she going with this?

“That one over there.” I pointed to the black and silver beauty at the other end of the case, its $30 price tag mockingly displayed in full view.

“Well, what’s the matter with that one?” she persisted. I thought, Duh! It only costs way more than I have.

“I only have enough for this one.” I mumbled, pointing at the cheap one. Suddenly, this thing over which I obsessed for months was almost embarrassing to even look at. I hung my head. What happened next left me speechless.

“We’ll take that one,” my mother said to the clerk, who was waiting patiently behind the case this whole time. She was pointing to the other one! Before I could react, she said, “Give me what you have, and I’ll cover the rest.” She took her wallet out of her purse. She even bought a package of blank tapes for me. I forgot all about those!

I’d bet a lot more than $30 that my mother had no idea that day where her “investment” would lead. That day began the journey of a lifetime, a journey I’m still on, and enjoying every minute of it. That tape recorder is long gone, and others have taken its place, and been replaced themselves; but I still remember the feeling. I still enjoy just setting up a mic or two and running a preamp directly to tape, then hitting rewind to see what I got. It’s a bit like taking a picture with film (remember film?). You’re never entirely sure what you’re going to get, but when it works out, it’s magic.

So what did I learn? I learned that if you want something badly enough, somehow you’ll get it, often in a way that will surprise you. And looking back, I can now see how often we knock ourselves out for something, thinking it’s just what we need, when in reality, it’s second best. If we’re willing to let go of it, God always works it out for us to have what is really best for us. O.K., that might be a stretch in light of what I’m talking about, but then God knew what I’d end up doing with my life, didn’t He?