Apple Of My Eye

In the fall of 2009 my friend Amber and I stopped in at a Best Buy, looking at laptop computers for Amber’s boyfriend. We made cursory passes by desktops, examining them in the way that all window shoppers do, when we came around to the computers adorned with little glowing apples. Before Amber went to the job of actually considering her options, she paused a moment at the Apple kiosk and stood there, as if dreaming.

The computers contrasted sharply with the simple, polished wood of their display table, which further set them apart from the rest of the brands. Everything else sat on black metal shelves, secured by black metal arms so that no one could pick them up and carry them away. The Apple notebooks had nothing keeping them there save for a thin white wire attached to a sensor. I’ve never attempted larceny, but I assumed that severing it would result in a lot of attention with loud sirens and flashing lights. Sitting that way, it truly felt like having one would be no more difficult than filling out a credit card application.

“My computer’s so old,” she said, tracing a finger along the lid of one of the shiny silver laptops. “I’d love to have a Mac, but…” She paused. “I don’t want to become one of those Mac snobs.”

I watched her finger as it followed the graceful curved edges of the otherwise rectangular lid, and I felt that familiar stirring, like heartstrings but in my back pocket.

Gadgets, to this day, are a big draw for me. As a self-proclaimed nerd, I have an eye for anything with glowing lights or blinking buttons, and the attraction is probably best described as “unhealthy.” Right up there with sugar and a mild self-loathing, technology could be described as one of my major addictions. Walking into an electronics store, I imagine that the sight of me is something like a kitten plopped into the middle of a room filled with yarn, if the yarn was dancing and the kitten hopped up on speed. God knows how much of my income I’ve squandered on technological trinkets that, really, are nothing more than flashy toys.

How, then, does one admit to already having become one of those snobs? I’d made the switch to Apple computers a year or so before, and I felt immediately uncomfortable in that moment, standing there looking at several overpriced products I had lying in wait for me back home. I went from feeling ashamed, then, to slightly defensive. I certainly didn’t think of myself as a snob, and as we walked away I ran through all my reasoning for wanting things like these and the justifications for already having them.

As a child, I loved toys that lit up and had switches and levers and made science-y noises. I would pretend that educational toys — things made of bright plastics that were supposed to teach a child how to count or multiply — instead made excellent controls for spaceships or a computer workstation at a distant outpost. Things didn’t even have to be toys. At my great-grandmother’s house, I would play with her melodica, a handheld musical instrument that looked like the result of a flute and a piano’s wild night in Vegas; the rows of black and white keys looked like buttons that would fire missiles or close a bulkhead against an advancing army of mutant soldiers.

Years later, in the middle of a camping trip where my mother and I seemed sentenced to boredom, she and I drove into town to look at the local shops. We were in the middle of a junk store, basically a glorified indoor garage sale, when I stumbled upon an entire computer priced at twenty-five dollars. The find felt like a prospector’s discovery of gold, and, without prodding, my mother asked if I’d like to have it. Never one to pass up a good deal, my mother, I think, overestimated the computer’s capabilities. When we got it back to our camper, we set it up on the foldaway dining table and plugged it in. From school and even at home, I was used to having a mouse and onscreen pointer to navigate things. But this thing was from a different era. All the monitor gave me was a black screen. That and a lime green cursor for typing commands in what I thought of as the old-fashioned way. At twelve years old and a child of the nineties, I had no idea how to work a computer that had possibly seen its prime during the Kennedy administration. So I was left typing little stories onto the screen, only to have no idea how to store or retrieve them when I shut the thing off.

The computer was a disappointment at best. Still, the sight of it, boulder-like and bowing the dining table, felt comforting in a way that got me through the rest of the camping trip. It even outweighed the fear I felt when using it, when the thought of it crashing through the table and crushing both of my legs covered me like a shadow.

In high school, when I got my first job, I passed up the opportunity to go to London on a class field trip so that I could buy my first real computer. The idea of going to another country felt promising in the way that adventure does when you’re a teenager and your departure date is still far off. Partly, it was my parents who diverted my desire to go. The trip was in the summer of 2002, not even a year after the events of September 11th. America had forced its way into the War on Terror, and being a U.S. citizen abroad — to my parents, at least — was like bringing a toasty roast beef sandwich into a bear cage.

“You could go to Europe,” my father said. “Or...you could get a brand new laptop.”

My mother chimed in, her voice masking her intention of me never leaving the country or even setting foot on a plane. “It’d be about the same amount of money. And it would last longer.”

All the wonders of the British Isles paled against the glowing promise of a shiny new computer, and in that moment, no matter how much I might have pretended to think about it, I was sold. As a family, we made the trip to a Best Buy, the nearest of which was almost forty minutes away, so that I could make my first foray into the world of zero percent financing.

In the way that these things go, the laptop ended up being outdated within eight months, and within shouting distance of its fourth birthday it quit on me, essentially retiring into the job of a thousand-dollar paperweight.

By this time I had a little better income, and so I purchased a new computer, an Apple laptop that I would turn around and resell less than a year later when a newer, better one caught my eye. I had no justification for doing it. I’d just finished paying off the desktop I’d bought, and there was nothing wrong with my laptop except for the fact that it lacked a few features of the shinier, slimmer models.

Standing there in the Best Buy, I had to wonder if I really was one of those Mac snobs. And not just a Mac snob, but a tech snob in general. What other reason could there be for my attitude toward technology? Should a man’s worth be measured in flashy gadgets, I guess I thought I might rank a few rungs higher than other people. But, as we walked away from the Macs and toward the other computers, perched on their demure black shelves reaching onward to infinity, it became clear that all my toys really are are testaments to the fact that I don’t have a life. While other people are out getting drunk in a friend’s cornfield or sleeping around in the backs of sports car, I’m sitting alone in a sea of glowing lights and blinking buttons, waiting for my next toy.

MAACOh My God

While I do appreciate the ease of living that having a car affords me, I can’t get over the fact that they’re so expensive to maintain. When I first started driving I rode under the impression that, after the final payment was made, or if your parents bought you one outright, that was it. End of story. Even if the car was a ragged, aging, piece of junk (which mine was), there would be nothing which would demand my semi-hard-earned money. Except for gas.

As the years drove on, my tires, much like my disillusionment with the ways of the automobile world, wore increasingly thin. The first time I bought new Goodyears for my aquamarine Ford Tempo was an experience that I will never forget, namely because it was something akin to watching someone steal cash from my wallet and then light it on fire.

This week I not only had to buy new tires, but my brakes recently decided that they, too, wanted some attention. And so, like a frazzled mother with children in a toy store, I broke down and made arrangements to get two new tires, an alignment, and have my brakes serviced. The entire process took about five hours. That’s from the time I arrived five minutes late for my appointment to when they called, saying they were finished, and I nearly cried as I checked inside my wallet for the poor credit card, scuffed and chipped like it had just returned from a shopping trip with one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

My grandmother gave me a ride back down to the garage — this after waking up early to bring me back home the first time. It felt strange having to depend of someone else for transportation. It was as if I were missing something vital to my very existence, and I wondered how on earth someone could go through their life not having a vehicle for transportation. At the garage I walked up to the cashier’s window. I opened my wallet, anticipating a total at least as devastating as news of a nuclear attack. Really, the number she gave me stood more in the ballpark of a tornado warning, but that still didn’t stop me from cursing, slightly, under my breath.

My Wife + My Money = VIKING FUNERAL

I've written about marriage/being married before, but I'm not sure if the non-married people who read this blog can truly understand what it's like to be married. There are many "pros" to being married:

I get up in the morning--and someone is there!

I go to bed at night--and someone is there!

I get sick--and someone is there to take care of me!

I get lost--and someone is there to help me find my way!

I have an extra sandwich--and someone is there to help me eat it!

So far, sounds pretty sweet don't it? I'm never lonely, I have a nurse for when I'm ill, I get real-time turn-by-turn directions when I'm lost, and my extra food doesn't spoil.

But what you might not know, is that there is a darker side to marriage. Shocking, I know right?Now, before I continue, let me say that I'm writing about this at great personal risk--but I'm a journalist, I tell the truth because I don't know any other way to be BUT 100% HONEST.

The dark side of marriage isn't covered in the media, and is never spoken of in public...but it's this: women are fucking VIKINGS!!!

I discovered this the very first week of our marriage.

When I came home that first Friday, my new blushing bride took my paycheck--the whole damn thing--and she put it in a boat. Not just any kind of boat, mind you, but a traditional Scandinavian longship (you know, those "viking" ships you see in cartoons and on the History Channel). It might not have been 100% authentic, but it looked damn near museum-quality to me.

Anyway, she put my paycheck into this boat...and then she pushed it into the ocean! Let me be clear: my wife wasn't escaping with my money and she wasn't giving it to someone else (say, an accomplice) who was leaving with my money. No, this was stranger--there was no one in the boat. Just before the current could sweep it away for good, she roared and thumped her chest (you know, like you see in cartoons and on the History Channel).

Then, and this is important, she STRUCK a match and LIT MY MONEY ON FIRE. My wife gave my money a VIKING FUNERAL!!!

Initially I thought "Hey, my wife is a Viking...cool" I also thought "maybe this burning my money is just a one-time only thing." Little did I realize that my wife being a Viking isn't "cool," not at all. It's fucking scary.

Oh, and it wasn't just a "one-time" thing either. This same funeral rite is performed every week, only on Fridays. It's scary, but what's worse everyone thinks Leah is a nice, sweet girl--NOT a scary Viking. Well she is, but I wouldn't expect you to take my word for it! I got proof! I got photographic evidence, see for yourself.

But I must warn you, this image will chill your blood:

The truly brave will click the pic, and see the full-screen horror!

Happy Friday, honey.

Big Spender

It’s not a recent occurrence, but money, much like boyfriends or good hair, never has a way of sticking with me. I’ve never been able to hold onto a bill of currency for more than a week — and that’s if my internet’s out or I’m in a coma — because once I have my hands on it, I start thinking about all the things that I’d like to have.

The list of offenses is a long one. If these things were necessities, then, sure, I’d say, why not? But as it turns out, each time I get a craving it’s for something that I neither need nor have any real use for: the new leather laptop bag for when I take my trips to nowhere; the full-sized digital piano awaiting the day it plays an entire song. Some of the lesser examples include armies of barely-used computer mice, each one just a little more stylish or feature-laden than the one before.

Ever since I was small, I’ve been prone to this kind of thing. I’ve always liked the rush of buying, the feeling of trading in those raggedy dollars for something new and shiny. And still, even now that the pocket-wrinkled bills of my youth have been replaced by little plastic cards, the desire remains the same. At the age of seven, I remember, I pleaded with my mother for the go-ahead to buy a Spider-Man action figure. “But I really want it,” I said, tugging at her hand as she tried to pull me out of the store.

“Don’t you already have one like that?” she asked.

I did. Wanting another didn’t make sense, but the six dollar bills in my pocket were screaming at me, a far cry from the earlier whispers that had first given me the idea. I’d gotten the bills from little chores done around my great-grandparents’ house, and though not inherently sentimental, the money, my mother thought, should have been kept and used for something like, I don’t know, feeding starving children or starting my own college fund.

In the end, though, facing a teary, blubbering child and store clerks rolling their eyes at a scene they’d witnessed more times than they could remember, she relented, and the elation I felt on the way home, tearing open the packaging like a starving man might rip through a sandwich wrapper, gave way three days later to the wish that I had some money for a new toy, a better toy. Something that would kick these twin Spider-Men’s ass.

When my brother, Matt, grew to be the age where he could start wanting things, I thought that together we might be unstoppable. The combined power of our desire to buy would overwhelm our mother’s defenses and render her powerless against us. Much to my surprise and dismay, I discovered that my brother was, in fact, a saver, the equivalent of a safety deposit box guarding its money, while I was a broken automated teller machine belching out dollar bills.

Long before he was able to get a job my brother would stash away his weekly allowances and the random, generous spurts of income our grandmother would grant us. Surely my parents, my mother in particular, thought this was spectacular. Finally! she must have thought, sighing as if heaving a heavy burden from her shoulders. Gruesome fears of taking me into a toy store gave way to dreams of Matt someday becoming an investor, of playing the stock market twenty or thirty years down the road from the stashes of dollars and change he kept beneath his bed or in his closet. “That’s good,” I would hear her coo when Matt told her about wanting to save up to buy something big. “Or I’ll just keep it,” he would sometimes say, “for later.” And I would watch as my mother melted.

To this day, my brother has an uncanny ability to keep himself from splurging, whereas I will find myself willingly setting down a much-needed tube of toothpaste in favor of a set of collectible Japanese Domo-kun figurines or a rhyming dictionary for when I one day pick up writing poetry. I can say, though it shames me, that I have gone without deodorant for the sake of a DVD box set.

There would be times, growing up, when I would look at Matt and wonder why he was saving up. Was it for the latest game console? No, he’d gotten that for Christmas. Was it a new TV? No, the one he had was fine. Was it some upcoming financial disaster I knew nothing about? Maybe, though it seemed both unlikely and unsettling that no one would have told me. Not knowing drove me insane, and so I began plotting ways to beat him at his own game.

In my college years I discovered the trojan horse of credit cards. It was nice being approved with my virgin credit ratings for what seemed like an instant surplus, a savings without the pesky detail of having to deprive myself. Three years later, under a mountain of debt and with nothing much to show for it aside from a pair of stonewashed Ralph Lauren jeans and a cozy country-style bedspread, I watched as my brother used cash to buy his own computer. Then, later, his new twenty-six inch flat-screen TV arrived, a nice addition to a bedroom already accented with video game systems bearing brands like Microsoft and Sony. As month by month I chipped away at the bills coming to our house like letters from an obsessive fan, I grew to envy him and the seeming ease with which he had it all.

When he was away at work or school, I would ransack his room, overturning his mattress and rifling through his desk drawers, looking like a madman for his cache of wealth.

It has to be here, I thought. Where is he keeping all of it?

I didn’t know what I would do if I found anything, though I was fairly certain I just wanted to see his money, to find out if he really was saving or if it was through some kind of magic that he was able to get all of this stuff. But, after what felt like hours of searching, I found nothing. In my mind I saw his wallet, then, stuffed beyond its capacity, his back pocket bulging like a tumor. Of course he would keep it on him. Angry and bitter, I returned to my room to tally up how many payments I had left before my seldom-used stereo system and the notebook computer with the failing keys were paid off. The answer was months, and I wondered how many other things my brother would be able to buy before I was able to scrape up enough dough just to put my car through a much-needed oil change.

By the time I was free from my debts, my brother was swimming in money, spending sixty dollars a pop on video games and, a few towns over, singlehandedly keeping a small paintball gun shop in business, while my car stubbornly refused to start on most days and I was forced to take out a loan to get a new one.

On the way home from the dealership, the weight of my financial responsibilities just starting to sink in, I rode with my father in silence. We had exhausted talk of the new car’s details — gas mileage, style, its little features — and now we concentrated on our respective roles: my father focusing on the road, and me thinking, How the hell am I going to pay for this? I might be able to turn tricks downtown if I were just a little more in shape, I considered, watching a string of fast food restaurants pass by. My stomach rumbled, but I told myself the hunger wasn’t there. Besides, the sooner I was out of the car, any car, the better.

At home, back in my room, I sat surrounded by the things that were finally, truly mine. I listened to the sound of my brother playing his video games, and as the sound of explosions rattled my walls, I took out a piece of notebook paper and jotted down the amount of the loan. Making note of my income felt like admitting I had some terrible illness; it left me feeling hopeless and, worse, poor.

Sitting there, portioning away paychecks I’d not yet received, I had to consider my ways: the gratuitous spending, the petty need to compete, and the consuming jealousy blinding me to everything I did have. I pushed back from my desk and looked around. Could this be enough? I wondered. And I told myself it was. If my bank account was any indicator, it would have to be.