The Powerbook 540 was my first laptop. I bought it on eBay in 1999, I think, and paid probably around $150 for it. The idea was that I could write the great American novel while watching my newborn son play in the yard. I wrote part of the article that I sold to the LA Times on it, but when I fired it up a few weeks ago, I remembered why I bought another-the screen would fade after a while, and I couldn’t use it. Plus, I was able to afford a used tangerine iBook-my favorite laptop ever.
When I bought this, I would use my desktop mostly, one of those cool looking iMac G3's that I was totally happy with. Now, the idea of being chained down to a desktop it totally foreign to me. The one desktop that gets used often in the house is the Mac that I keep in the front room with all my music stored on it-another post soon.
All the computer work I do at home is all done on the MacBook I'm using right now, wherever I happen to be sitting in the house-or at Storbucks, or wherever else I happen to be.
I wrote the following a dozen years ago, with the hope that I could sell it to some parenting magazine or other, but I didn't . I know that I wrote a few drafts, so I think it's a pretty good piece of writing that I had completely forgotten that I had written. So, a thought from 2002, back before the blogging world.
2/22/02
I am pretty clear on my basic moral beliefs, and have every intention of passing them on to my children. When my first child, a son, was born last year, I felt tha I would be a good role model. I know that I want to teach my son to not steal, not be mean, not do drugs, and other things that are, I think, no brainers for most parents.
But a year after my son’s birth, I find that little things I do every day cause me to think a great deal about the examples I set for my child. I relate my actions to the actions of my parents, and what I want to teach my son.
A few months ago, I bought a water host from a large chain home improvement store. It was late, and I misplaced the hose in my garage. When I couldn’t find the hose the next day, I assumed that I left it in the shopping cart, and went back to the store with my receipt to see if I could get another. I talked to a clerk, who said that she couldn’t help me, but that she’d call a manager. The manager listened to about half my story, and then said to just take another one. When I put the second hose in the garage, I went right to the spot where I left the first hose.
My first thoughts were that I bought a tone of stuff from that store, that the store was a long drive from my home, that there was no paperwork on the second hose, and that the store would make it’s money back on me from the other stuff that I have bought, and will buy from that store. It’s not really stealing, I thought to myself, because the second hose was given to me. Though I know some people would have taken the hose right back, I aslo knew that just as many people would have just kept the hose, as I would have done in my pre-father days.
I believe that my parents did the best that they knew how to do, and that most of my growing up was a positive experience. Still, there were times that my parents didn’t think things all the way throught
I thought about what my own parents would have done, and remembered being on vacation when I was young. My mother found an expensive camera in a bathroom at Yellowstone Park. After waffling for a while, she finally decided to keep it. My mother tried to take pictures with it, but when she developed the film, the pictures came up out of focus. The other pictures, thopugh, came out fine, with smiling people enjoying their vacation.
My parents never were able to work that camera, and after a few rolls, they gave up and never used the camera again.
Over twenty-five years have passed, and for some reason that event snuck into my mind while I looked at the free water hose in my garage. With the lost camera, someone was hurt, at least a little, by our actions. With the hose, no one was hurt really, except some faceless corporation who would write off the $10 loss in a ledger someplace.
But as I looked at it, I thought of the example that I want to set for my son.
I know that I don’t always know how to do the right thing. I know that in my youner days, I would purposely do the wrong thing just because. But now my little boy is watching me. I don’t know when his awareness begins, but I know that I better act like it’s already begun.
So after four days and some lost sleep, I took the hose back. I handed it back to the same clerk who handed it to me. She looked rather surprised and wasn’t sure what to do with the hose I returned. After a second, she recovered and thanked me. I asked that she tell the manager that gave me the hose also. I didn’t want him to think he was taken advantage of.
I set the example for my son that I wanted to set, though it took my a few days to do it. My son doesn’t know, and I may not remember to tell him the story, but it’s a good thing for him-and a good start for me.
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