Copyright (c) 2000 by Michael Finley

Why is it that some of us become techies, and the rest of us take another route through life? I trace my decision to my Uncle Ed.

Ed would grow up to be a hotshot R&D engineer, and you know how they are, have any girl he wanted. I wound up an embittered freelance writer. For which 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 Derbies 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 hood 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. An only child given the run of the family workbench, he wore a pocket protector and carried a slide rule around with him everywhere. He subscribed to the quarterly Allied Electronics catalog, the one you order electronic kits from. Even at age 9 he buttoned his top button to the neck. And he was always pushing his taped-together glasses up his nose.

I don’t claim to be any kind of prophet, but I was sensible enough to intuit that Ed, and not me, 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 pasted together, or the bike I spray-painted, and he would whip out blueprint plans for a ham radio voice recognition project.

In the woods, I bragged that I could swing from a tree vine across a 20-foot ravine. He explained that it wasn't possible -- that the most basic trajectory analysis indicated I would end up hanging marooned over the precipice. I swung for the other side with all my might, to show him. To his credit, he did slide down the edge to catch me when I could no longer hold on.

But the moment that stands out for me was at his place. He'd completed revamped the electricity in his parents' house, so that every room had a push-button intercom and stereo tweeters. He installed a central woofing system in the furnace room.  He asked if I'd like to hear some music, and I said sure.

So we opened the cabinet housing the console stereo he had assembled and soldered together, and he showed off the precision counterweighting on the toner 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 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, etc. But I found one unlikely treasure, the Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." And it was in mint condition, the plastic sleeve still intact, 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's "Whipped Cream and Other Delights" from the brass wire rack.

"No," I whimpered, as I felt my opportunity slip away.

The house soon filled with the cheery sound of ersatz Mexican trumpeting, and all I had to show for it was the album cover, the one with the naked woman covered with whipped cream, which I mournfully carried with me to the bathroom.

"Hey," Ed called after me. "Jacket's supposed to stay in the den."

"Back off!" I hissed, and stepped backward into the shadows.

In the competition to be king of the techno hill, I knew when I was licked. And that is how it's been ever since.