Boy meets Stereo, a Parenting Victory

Last week, my 15 year-old son was over for dinner.  He had an unusually heavy homework load.  Although it never happens, he had to spend some time on his school work when we would usually just make some dinner and watch something (The West Wing right now.  I know, good parenting, trying to placate the current situation with some foreign, utopian construct of a President Bartlet.)

He sat at my desk with his laptop and I tried to be as quiet as possible while getting dinner underway.  After a time, he asked if he could hook up to the stereo and listen to some music while he worked.  Absolutely was the only answer I could muster.

Now, I take great pride in my setup.  It isn’t anything fancy, but it will put out some high quality tunes.  The amp is an NAD, speakers are Polks.  When I received the system as a 21^st birthday present, 31 years ago, it was state of the art.  The speakers, Polk 5 Jrs., were about the best out there without spending a million dollars.  They weigh a ton, measure about 2’ tall, and produce an incredible, high quality amount of sound.

I am ashamed to say that the boy was totally unprepared.  My fatherhood was simultaneously shamed and excited when he, at very low volume, exclaimed his surprise at the sounds which washed over him, even at very low volume.  At the stove, I shook my head.  My God, I have left unaddressed a key tenet of fatherhood- Kicking out the jams, motherfucker.

I had a second amp laying around.  It is a second hand Technics which had not wanted to power up when I reconstituted my system.  A couple days after the dinner date, I plugged it in and, lo and behold, it had juice.  I tried my speakers and had success.  I also had an old pair of hand me down, bigger, older Polks. 

The mania took over and I called him on speaker phone to let him hear the glorious noise from the Technics and Polks I had in use.  He was thrilled to hear them, and that the setup was headed his way that Sunday, our next visit, and only a day away.

After some experimentation with the hand me down speakers, I realized, traumatically, the tweeters were shot.  Furthermore, the Technics amp had some kind of glitch which only allowed one channel to play at a time, regardless of the wiring combinations I contrived (right speakers only, any input choices for playback…).

I was crushed.  A mania built and remained and became a black cloud of doom which is making a promise to your offspring and having to let them down.  What to do, what to do…google was the only answer.

Salvation tempted – a new model of Polks at a bargain price was available.  The “local” big box store had them.    Several calls ensued to ensure 1) they had the speakers and 2) they were the price I was told per pair and not per speaker, a very contested answer which would have been a deal breaker (it was per pair).  Only an hour away, commitment set in, I jumped in the car.

Frantic, at the store, the salesman failed in finding the sought after item.  By some act of God, another salesman, standing nearby, overheard my increasingly anxious tenor and asked, “Did you call earlier?  We set our last pair aside for you.”  Awash with relief, I grabbed a 100’ roll of Monster Cable and sauntered forth to the register.

All I could think was my son must have a hi-fi experience, blowing his young mind with the power of music.  He loves his music, but had suffered with the piss poor quality of an Ipod and earbuds, laptop speakers, and the like.  His deprivation could not stand.

My first stereo arrived when I was in the 8^th grade.  I cannot express the joy and transcendence I experienced sitting in my bean bag chair, massive, poor quality speakers set on either side, with the low grade all in one unit pumping out Beethoven’s 5^th on the turntable.  It meant the world to me at the time.  Previously, my sound system was a transistor radio, the size of pack of cigarettes, given to me by my grandfather, c.1972.  Living in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, I could pick up WSM from Nashville.  It blew my mind.  The consummate component system of my 21^st birthday rattled my roomates and everyone within my dorm hall for the duration of the semester.  My son would not live with the utter, abject lack of sensory overload which is high quality, very loud music.

So, arriving home, I realized I must make the sacrifice – he must have the NAD amp with the new speakers.  A night of high decibel testing proved the capacity for these remarkably compact speakers.  I was giddy with the promise of his surprise.

The next day, I picked him up, feeling heavy from the coming departure of my much loved amp and the spent mania.  There was no promise the rig would hold up.  The amp is ancient and persnickety.  Sometimes it doesn’t play both right and left channels.  The solution is jiggling the volume knob until both kick in.  The radio receiver is defunct, the LEDs are long dead.

When he arrived that day, I explained there had been some technical setbacks since I boasted on the phone.  As he entered the living room, he saw the inelegantly dissected old speaker, tweeter dangling from the cabinet, tools lying about.  Fully in the room, I announced the acquisition of the new speakers, placed generously in the opposite corners of the room, across from the couch, my steadfast perch.

He really didn’t know how to respond, looked at me as anyone would – what is this crazy man doing?  Wires were everywhere – jack cables for various experiments, multiple varieties of speaker wire strewn all over, and the NAD amp sitting atop a cannibalized old speaker, precariously, next to my couch spot.

He sat, befuddled.  I turned on the amp.  Its standard “I’m warming up” buzz filled the speakers.  Handing him the plug for the auxiliary cable, I told him to plug it into his phone (another generational shock to my sensibilities) and pick a tune for the test drive.  He said, “No, you.”  We agreed on Pusherman by Curtis Mayfield. 

The minute the music started, his face lit up.  We had it cranked.  “I can FEEL it in my body!!” he exclaimed.  From there we went through several choices of higher quality sonic options – The Feelies (required for testing speakers), Fleetwood Mac, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Cheap Trick…

The end result was a very happy boy, with much spontaneous hugging, a first.  We listened, at top volume, for a couple hours before lugging the rig to his room.  A lingering thought, and great satisfaction, in the back of my mind was the sheer shock of his mother when something like Guns and Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle (his first choice when we set it up in his room) blasted with enough volume to fill the whole house.  Ah…the joys of being a non-resident father.