It’s funny how some things in life seem to come full circle. In 1981 I was a brand new Private First Class stationed in the Washington D.C. area with the Presidential Honor Guard, The Old Guard. Today, stationed here again in a different capacity as a full Colonel, I happened to drive down a small street I hadn’t been down since I walked it twenty-seven years ago.

When I was a Private, I had no real financial responsibilities. The Army housed me, clothed me, gave me three meals a day (four if I had night duty), and provided various sorts of athletics and recreation free of charge. My girlfriend lived in another state, my car insurance was paid six months in advance, and gas was relatively inexpensive. Though I didn’t understand it at the time, I had it made.

One payday, with exactly four hundred and ten dollars in my pocket, nearly a month’s pay, I walked past a shop I had never seen before, something called a “Computer Boutique.” You have to recall that at that time, there were no real PCs available to the masses. Most of my friends were gaming geeks and computer nerds (imagine that) and knew practically everything there was to know about the most recent advances in “data processing.” Two of them were even computer programmers for the military, which means they could speak in obscure languages like FORTRAN and COBOL (I still don’t know what those words mean, but you should remember the languages spoken by your friends, even if you can’t speak them yourself).

One of my friends had a miracle of modern science in his barracks room, a Radio Shack TRS 80 that he had built for himself from a kit. It had one game program, a primitive version of lunar lander where you used voice to accelerate and decelerate the rocket motors on a crudely depicted version of the Apollo Landing Module. We spent night after night watching Ken adjust the program, trying to ascertain whose voice was most readable by the machine (mine), and watching the lander crash into snowy black and white lunar cathode ray geography. I listened to them use computer related words and, because I actually had a girlfriend, even though she was hundreds of miles away, I could never really understand what they were talking about. Nonetheless, as an early Foreign Area Expert, one who could move freely between the worlds of nerds and jocks and brains, I thought that I had mastered the vocabulary of the time, even if I hadn’t.

On the day in question, which incidentally is probably the last time in my life I can remember having four hundred dollars cash in my pocket, I confidently entered the boutique to talk to a salesman. How much can something like that cost anyway, I thought? There were no computers on tables, or banks of monitors, or walls filled with boxed software. In fact, as I looked around the neatly decorated store that looked pretty much like someone’s living room, I thought perhaps I has misread the sign out front. I turned to leave. “May I help you young man?” a guy who couldn’t have himself been more than twenty-one asked from a desk in the corner. “I thought this was a computing shop,” I said, “but I don’t see any data processors or programmable calculators or anything.” If a twenty-something can raise their chin in a snobbish manner, this fellow did. “This is not a computing shoP,” he said, accent on the “P.” “It is a BoutiQue!” Accent on the “K!”

What I had been hoping to find, for under four hundred and ten dollars, was a ready built computer like Ken’s, only better. So I asked for exactly what I thought I wanted. “I want to look at some good software,” I said, as though the emphasis on the word software would let him know that I had friends who were computer geeks and that, while I wasn’t actually a member of the computer literate, I knew some people who were. I didn’t know what I was asking, but he did. “What, exactly, did you want your application to do?” he asked. Did he say application? I rolled through my mental rolodex - job application, application of medicine, application of liquor…nope…no personal understanding of application in reference to data processing.

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to sound insulted.

“We can assemble code for any contextual application you require, but you have to be specific in your design parameters.” He looked at me and waited. Code? Design parameters? I was in way over my head. I just wanted some kind of game you could play on a screen, which is incidentally what 99% of people still want from computers nearly three decades later. “I don’t need an application,” I said, “I need a program.” He looked at me and realized I was in way over my head. He glared. I looked at the floor and then back at him, admitting through body language that I had little real clue what I was talking about. He raised his chin still higher. It actually got easier from there. (This is where I first learned that if you are honest up front about your computer illiteracy, or even your technical incompetence, you may actually be befriended by a kind, all-knowing and all-powerful geek. Actually, befriended comes later in life, this is where I learned about being intellectually bested by a snobbish prat).

“Do you have a computer?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“We custom build computing machines here for businesses and organizations and affluent customers. Do you know what you want us to build for you?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Do you have at least five thousand dollars?” he smiled, knowingly, triumphantly.

“No,” I said flatly.

“You might be interested in the music shop next door,” he said, pointing helpfully while grinning like the lion after its meal.

I thanked him for his time, and because I didn’t want him to think I had been too dense to understand his suggestion, I actually went next door to the music store.

It wasn’t a music store, it was a music boutique.

It didn’t sell music, it sold instruments. Oh brother!

Twice in one day I had walked into a shop I really had no business being in. At that age however, there is too much teenage pride coursing through the veins to ever openly admit that a mistake had been made. I could have turned around and walked back out. Instead, I looked around the shop quickly and pointed to the instrument closest to me. “How much is that mandolin?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see young man. Do you play?” This gentleman was older, clearly wiser, and already seemed to know the answer. Mistakes are only bad if you don’t learn from them. He was still waiting for my answer. “Do you play son? Would you like to?”

“No sir,” I said. “I don’t play any instrument. I’ve held one once or twice, but I don’t read music and I have to admit, I don’t know a thing about it. I’d like to though.”

“Well son,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes, “an instrument can be a friend to you when you most need it.” He reached for the price tag and pulled his glasses farther down his nose to read the price. “Good choice by the way. This one here is not quite as pricey as some of these others. It’s only four hundred and ten dollars with tax.” He stopped and looked me in the eye again. “I’ll throw in a book and a few picks if you want it,” he added. I stared at him, stunned.

“Did you say four hundred and ten dollars?” I asked.

“Including tax,” he said. He smiled as if he knew what was in my pocket.

“I’ll take it,” I said, “and thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Hope it brings you luck son.” I never went back.

Several years and several girlfriends later, when I could play eight or nine chords and pick a few notes, I serenaded my lady with an original song, accompanied by that mandolin. She loved it, and me apparently, enough to marry me less than a year later. During our first Christmas together, she bought me an antique mandolin from a flea market in Germany. Over the years several other mandolins have ended up hanging from the ceiling in what we call the music room. The original was stolen during a move from Europe in 1999, and we’ve since replaced it with one that was similar, though not exactly the same. I still like to play them occasionally but hadn’t really thought in many years about how I had chanced upon the first one. Until today.

Some things change and some things stay the same. I passed down that street today driving, not walking, with slightly more than four dollars and ten cents in my pocket. The computer boutique and music boutique are both gone, long since converted into pricey row houses. I still have friends who know much more about computers than I do, but I don’t try and pretend I understand things I don’t. Unfortunately, I tend to know more about computers than most of the salespeople working in the Computer Mega-boutiques, emphasis on the “Mega.”

I am happier now than I ever could have imagined being at that time in my life. Some of my computer friends still don’t have girlfriends. Some of them are married with children. Some of them play the mandolin better than I do. I can’t imagine that many people are as happy as I am, though I hope they are. I sat in front of those two houses and wondered what would have happened in life if I had entered the music store first…

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