She made me an offer

1981. Maybe 82. Right there somewhere before word processing shoved typewriters out the window and into obsolescence. Back then, I had a Sherman tank that printed beautifully but took up half an office desk and wasn’t getting any younger. Got it cheap. Used. My dad found it. I don’t remember particulars.

But I was coveting something new because I was doing my dissertation, typing every day, all day. I couldn’t help thinking my life would be greatly improved if I had a new Selectric–one of those with the jumpy little circular print heads. Something 20th century at least.

An IBM Selectric was not something our limited budget could handle. I was a graduate student, and Barbara was working part-time at the bank downtown. My assistantship was nothing to sneeze at, but we weren’t swimming in cash, and we had two kids, little ones.

My mother intervened. She made me an offer I couldn’t win. She must have picked up on my covetousness. She’d buy me the very best typewriter I could find if I would promise her that no “naughty words” would ever march out of that little rotating ball. It was a righteous offer; my mother was a righteous woman.

Had I known what was about to get my first Apple just a year later, I could have been sleazy about it, taken her up on the offer, then sold that IBM a year later and picked up a IIe. Could have done that. If I would have, I’d have been freed from the contract she wanted me desperately to sign.

But I didn’t see what was coming, so I faced my mother’s saintly proposition, which really didn’t offer alternatives. Taking her up on it meant promising something I couldn’t, so I typed all 300 pages of that dissertation–a novel, by the way–on that Sherman tank (did a little cussing in the process). And, if you’re wondering–yes, there were a few naughty words.

Even though my mother is gone and all of that seems a lifetime ago, I’m still not cutting any deals. All I’ll promise you is my best, as will all of us here at The Twelve. What we’re trying to do is gently open up the world around us, His world, that world He loved so very greatly (John 3:16).

And, no, I won’t say there won’t be any naughty words—never have said that and never will.

But I promise I’ll be circumspect, and I promise, as do the 11 others, that we’ll work at seeing as best we can and write with as much style and grace as will come from these keyboards.

I’m saying all of this because The Twelve needs your support. We’d like you to help us build something of a community here, a flourishing community of readers and thinkers and believers.

We’d appreciate your help. Let me rephrase that: we’d love your support.

Okay, okay—I promise I’ll try to control myself. My mother would like that.

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