Variation on a Theme, Book 7
Copyright© 2026 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 31: Howdy!
Sunday, September 21, 1986
As usual, we split up to make a bunch of phone calls. One or more of Jas, Angie, and Paige joined me for some of them — everyone wanted to talk to Grandmother and Professor Berman, for instance — but we all had our own friends, too.
There wasn’t a lot of big news. Our university friends were busy with classes and their own friends. Grandmother and Professor Berman were managing their various ailments, aches, and pains. And so on, and so forth.
Most of the time, I was hoping for ‘no big news.’ Big news in the middle of a semester might mean a disaster of one sort or another. Part of me thought that was inevitable. Sooner or later, something would go wrong health-wise, relationship-wise, academically, or something else.
On the other hand, my first-life history suggested those things might not be a foregone conclusion. Very few of my friends had divorced. Even breakups were relatively rare. Few people had truly screwed up even a class, much less something bigger. While I’d had friends who had been seriously ill, it had been later in life for the most part.
We would see.
Fortunately, I got through to Megan after trying her phone a couple of times. I’d been afraid she would be out all afternoon. She was highly interested in Janet and Lizzie’s wedding and looked forward to hearing about it and seeing the photos. Unsurprisingly, she was kicking ass in her classes. So was Calvin. They were both also expecting good years in basketball. She thought both teams would likely be a bit better this year.
We tentatively planned to meet her and Calvin for lunch before the football game on October 11th. The game was at the Astrodome, but we didn’t necessarily need to eat near there. The Astrodome had far more parking than would be needed for a typical UH football game, so getting there close to game time should be fine.
I needed to check with Hank and Darla. They might well attend the game, especially since it would give Darla and Megan a chance to catch up. They hadn’t been all that close, but close enough for it to matter.
We let Laura know that Amy was going to hear the story next month. She agreed with our sharing her side of it and wished us well. Even without knowing Amy, she knew the judgment we’d shown with Jess, Cammie, and Mel and trusted us to know Amy.
I couldn’t get through to Marshall, but calls with him would have to move to Mondays or Tuesdays. Sundays were film days during the season. At least he would be in a good mood. Tulane had crushed Vanderbilt 42-10, according to the paper. I hoped Marshall had done well individually. I should find out when I next talked to him.
Angie got tied up talking with Sharon. Thus, she missed one of the most interesting calls of the day, the usually unremarkable call with Mom and Dad.
After hitting the usual topics — their health, our health, how classes were going, how Dad’s job was going, and so forth — Dad asked me a question I was fortunately prepared for.
“I read about the new ‘386’ computer from P.C.’s Limited,” he said. “Even with as little as I know about computers, that’s quite the achievement, I think! First out with a brand-new processor!”
“It’s a very big deal, I agree.”
“You must have known it was coming,” he said.
“I did. There are still things I can’t mention, but most of it is public now.”
“I’m curious about whatever you can share. Legally, and ethically, of course.”
“Of course! So ... if you read the Wall Street Journal’s coverage...” I said.
“I did,” he said, jumping in. “Fascinating!”
“That’s the core of it, really. Obviously, no one could bring out a new Intel-based computer with full Microsoft support without Intel and Microsoft being involved. That’s actually why I joked about not having met Bill Gates yet, way back when. Michael hasn’t met him in person, that I know of, but I’m one person away from getting him on the phone, which is quite something in and of itself.”
“It is!”
“So, there was that. It all goes back many months. None of this happened quickly. Michael and I talked about it before committing to it. Not that I decided anything, but jumping in first was a high-stakes gamble. Many engineers had to work on that product, meaning they’re a cost, both to hire them and to divert talented people away from other work.”
“Of course,” Dad said. I could hear him nodding along.
“So ... on the one hand, being first to market, and making Microsoft and Intel happy, is a big deal. Not going down that path would have made both of them unhappy. Not good! But it also committed the company to months of expense and turmoil over a processor no one but Intel was even sure worked. Microsoft had to ship their stuff on time, too, or the resulting computer wouldn’t really be much better than a 286 system.”
“But they made it all come together. And really well, it sounds like!”
“That’s what I’m hearing. We actually have two in the house now — not that I’m using them, which I’m sure you’ll find funny...” I said.
“I do! Hard to believe you’re not all over a new computer!”
“I’ve still only barely used IBM compatibles at all. Mel and Amy, the engineers in the house, are much more interested. I’ll get there, but mostly what I do right now is write papers, and Macs are great for that. Outside of the occasional class, I hardly program anything at all right now.”
“Not something I would have expected,” he said. “But, of course, we never expected Angie to go into mathematics, either. You both surprised us a great deal!”
“We surprised ourselves just as much!”
I paused, then added, “Oh, one more thing on the deal. It was already in progress when we were interviewing candidates for President. About all we could say was that part of our optimism was based on a project under a non-disclosure agreement.”
“Interesting! You would certainly have wanted to tout it otherwise, I would think.”
“Oddly, I think it helped us. The man we hired, Lee, was partly convinced to accept our offer because we didn’t over-promise. I think respecting the NDA also helped. It may well have mattered more that we were obviously behaving honorably and ethically than any amount of crowing about potential big future products would have helped us. That, and ... well, I know Michael’s financials are honest and above-board. As Angie said, their CFO was just not good enough to cook the numbers enough to fool her.”
Dad laughed loudly at that. When he’d recovered, he said, “That sounds like her! And that she would be right about it, too!”
“It was pretty funny. Anyway ... part of it was convincing Lee that we weren’t overstating the growth rate. It sounded preposterous! From a million in sales a quarter in the summer of 1984 to over $75 million a quarter in early 1986? How often does that happen? It helped having something big where we could just say, ‘Nope! It’s really encouraging, but we can’t talk about that.’”
“That’s a good thing, all around,” he said. “You appear ethical because you are ethical. And, of course, I like that the man you found is someone who would make that a primary factor in his decision.”
“He’s an Aggie, and he takes the Honor Code — ‘An Aggie does not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate anyone who does’ — very seriously. It also helped that I could quote it and say, truthfully, that we follow it. Angie and I talked about it later, and — while we didn’t go here because of it — we both think it turns out to be really important.”
He was quiet for a second, and then said, “I knew that about both of you, but ... that reinforces it. Of course, about Jasmine and Paige, too. And your other friends. It’s certainly how I’ve always believed business should be done.”
“I think it’s the only way to proceed. Angie and I have said repeatedly that, if we turn into awful, unethical, greedy people, we want everyone around us speaking up loudly. It’s somewhere between ‘For the love of money is the root of all evil’ and ‘What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world but lose his soul?’ Money is important, but loving it for itself is a bad thing.”
Again, he was quiet. After the pause, he said, “Again ... it shows how much you were listening. Both of you, I mean. It’s not a problem I expected to have, but I didn’t expect to have children who owned a house at twenty!”
“One more verse we repeat among ourselves: ‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ We feel like so much has been given to us, both materially and beyond that. If much is expected, we want to live up to that.”
“I’ve noticed the level of thought you put into giving thanks each year,” he said, sounding thoughtful. “That ties into it, perhaps.”
“It does. If you’re not understanding the importance of giving thanks for the good things in your life ... well, somewhere down that path lies a great deal of arrogance.”
“This has been far more fascinating than I even expected,” he said. “The new computer is just a backdrop for so much more!”
“It is,” I said. “And ... well, we don’t have any particularly big business topics right now, but there will undoubtedly be more. Either P.C.’s Limited is going to grow and prosper — and that’s certainly a topic — or they’ll stumble and fall. That would be fascinating, too. Hoping for the first, but ... success means still more money, which means more reason to stay aware of money being good for the good that is done with it, not for itself.”
“I’ll be waiting, of course! Thank you for sharing all of that!”
“You’re very welcome, of course.”
As I said goodbye to Mom, who had undoubtedly been listening to his side of the conversation (and would shortly be aware of what I’d said), I figured they would talk to Angie sometime soon, simply to hear her views on things. It stood to reason.
It also made me think about Christmas. One obvious gift would be speakerphones for all three sets of in-laws. We probably should have done that earlier, but better late than never. In a sense, a speakerphone is a very prosaic gift. But in another, it says, ‘We want to stay close to both of you.’ That isn’t ‘prosaic’ at all. It’s something quite precious to empty-nest parents.
Dinner tonight was early, so we could get done and head over to Jolly Rollie for the Huey Lewis concert. Candice and Sherry joined us for dinner. We were trying to make that a Sunday tradition, and it seemed to be working.
I would miss them next weekend, and explaining that was still a bit awkward. Exactly what sort of investment could I have that required flying out to California for a weekend? We didn’t want to lie and say I was somewhere else, not when P.C.’s Limited was going to be public soon enough.
More disclosure was probably in our future, but not very soon. My emotional energy around disclosures was entirely focused on Amy, at least for now. A misstep with Candice and Sherry was one thing. A misstep with Amy would be something else entirely.
While it wouldn’t be in my list of top concerts, the Huey Lewis concert was quite enjoyable. The opening act was Duane Eddy and the Rebels, and that alone was worth the cost of admission. I’d never seen Duane Eddy before and, most likely, would never see him again. He wasn’t a ‘bucket list’ performer, but he was close. If nothing else, seeing him perform ‘Peter Gunn’ was amazing. It was even more amazing given that The Art of Noise’s version of Peter Gunn, featuring Duane, was on the charts right now. I’d always liked The Art of Noise, and this was a particularly nice convergence of events.
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