07/10/2007 17:59:37 EST • tags: childmanipulation, dirtybusiness, electronics, midget, myshit, nerdery, noodling, oscilloscope, parts, past, theivery, wires
The title here is true, and this is a true story. I used to love nooling around with electronics. It didn’t matter what, as long as it was “electronics”, and “noodling”. This was when I was between, like, 6 and 12 years of age, mostly. I would gather junk TVs and stereos in my basement “workshop” and dissect them. I didn’t really know what I was doing; the best I could do was make funny noise come out of speakers, or make the lights light up on some component thing. I found old telephones especially entertaining, because of the easy-to-decode colored wiring and such.
So but yeah. I had a friend named Ara Kenian. He was my first nerd buddy, in retrospect; he would come over and we’d rewire things together. He was much better at that stuff than I was (I think he eventually went to MIT for engineering, or somesuch) and we’d have a lot of fun, because he’d try to establish some legit project for us to work on, and I would fuck it up egregiously, and so we’d degenerate into nonsensical babble, which I guess is what you do when you are a poorly socialized nerd child, as we both most definately were. Yeah.
Here, in fact, is an example of how nerdy I was at the time: when I got my allowance, I would take it to the local hardware store, and buy needlenose pliers, or cable TV connectors, or shit like that. Not candy, or whatever it was that you normal 8-year-olds blew your allowance on. I bought electronic parts. That’s how I usually put it: parts. As in, Mom, I cleaned up my whole room, can I go to Mass Hardware and get some parts now, pleeeaase?? It was kind of ridiculous.
If I was a really really good kid, and did everything I was supposed to, and I was really lucky, I would get a trip to the dumpsters behind the Sony service center. That was a special treat for me, maybe once every two months I’d get to go.
But yeah, so at one point I got an oscilloscope. Oscilloscopes like the one I am talking about looked like this:
… I am sure that these days, you go and get some $40 USB dongle thing, and then pow, your computer can do everything an old-skool oscilloscope could do, AND MORE. But in those days, oscilloscopes were still pretty much the shit. You could literally SEE what was going on in your wires, basically, and this was the missing piece of the puzzle for me to actually do some sort of actual electronics stuff. I was very excited.
But what happened was this: the next time I was at Mass Hardware blowing my allowance on parts, I ran into an apparently like-minded individual. I struck up some sort of conversation with this guy, Joe, who appeared to be my age, and who was also there with his mom, on a quest for parts. At least, he appeared to be my age, but he kept saying that he was 15, even though he was my height, which was short for an 8-year-old I think. So we were talking about parts and electronics and other such shit, and I mentioned (no doubt with pride) that I had an oscilloscope.
It was shortly after this that he invitied me to his house, which was coincedentally located not two blocks away from my house. He was charming and friendly, but most importantly, he said I could come and take as many parts from his basement workshop.
After somehow winning my mom over to this idea, I went over to Joe’s. I was, quite frankly bowled over: while my parents had confined my workshop to a small corner of our basement, Joe had clearly taken over the entirety of his, much to the audiable chagrin of his mom. Joe, in fact, was constantly quibbling with her, and would occasionally use his parts as weapons: he had constructed a bunch of ridiculously overpowered amplifiers, whose sole employ seemed to be the squelching of his mom’s aggrivated comments. So we tromped around through the basement, through canyons formed of shelves of parts, past workbenches covered with floral masses of wires, and under enormous subwoofers hung from the raw joists in the cieling with spare wires. And Joe had a big paper bag, into which he would throw all manner of interesting parts.
“Vacuum tubes? Sure, have a bunch!”
“You want this power supply? Here, have a power supply. It’s brand new, works, yeah. Take it!”
“Here, I can give you these phone bells. Oh, you like phone parts? I have more of them in this box. Go ahead!”
It was my dream come true. It did not bother me that Joe would occasionally put down his boxes of parts, and grab around me for a hug, saying things like “It’s great to have met you, buddy pal.” Nor did I find his mom’s squalking protests at all amiss; after all, we both giggled when the speaker noise overpowered her. But I do remember him saying, about a third of the way through, “So I’ll bring these over, and trade you for the oscilloscope, right, buddy?” And although that was a big deal, definately, I assumed that I had promised him such, and I nodded enthusiastically.
And that’s what happened. He came over, and left me with the parts, and asbsconded with my oscilloscope. After he left, I realized that the trade was hardly equitable, and that he had clearly got the better part of the deal. But that was okay, even, right? I mean, he was my new friend, and I’d get to play with the oscilloscope over at his workplace, just like he could play with my all my phone stuff and my nonsensically reconfigured tape decks. Right?
But so: Two days later, Joe rang my doorbell unexpectedly. He didn’t say much. I let him in, and he went right down to my basement workshop. He packed up most of the parts he’d left me with, including the power supply and the totally awesome vacuum tubes, and left without saying goodbye.
And I knew then that I would NEVAR SEE HIM, OR MY OSCILLOSCOPE, AGAIN!!!! (sob)
So there you have it: a midget stole my oscilloscope. I think Ara came over after that, and we laughed it off and built something baroque and nonfunctional out of the leftovers. And then I forgot about the entire episode until like a year ago, when I somehow drunkenly recounted this story for some friends, and my pal Jed shouted, “A midget stole your oscilloscope!” And so. I don’t mind using the offensive term “midget” vis a vis this guy, because he is a dirty thief and a manipulator of children. Yeah!
