Pffffft! Gone!

Last year our TV went on the fritz. The picture would disappear and a terrifically annoying squeal would blast out of it. I hated it. It was extremely annoying. It was just like trying to go to sleep and having a troll sneak into your bedroom and set your bedding on fire. Because EVERYONE knows what THAT is like!

About this same time we had a garage sale. Mandy stuck the TV out with all of the other junk we were selling. I didn't think we should even give it away. After the garage sale, I learned Mandy had hornswaggled some poor consumer $50 for it! I felt guilty and exuberant all at the same time. Similar to how it would feel if you caught the bedding torching troll and set his hair on fire.

With 50 filthy dollars we went to Best Buy in search of our new electronic babysitter, friend and mentor. I had not looked over an electronics show room for about 7 years. I knew nothing about the features that the new TVs had. I briskly paced in front of the TVs looking only at prices. I was shocked to see that a regular CRT TV was about $400-$600. Flat screen LCDs were starting at about $699, were larger and were a whole lot cooler. It did not take much before I had forgotten the Idea of buying a CRT and was now studying the tags on flat screens.

I wandered around and looked at the picture quality of every TV from the most expensive to the cheapest. Then I started looking at features, resolution and picture size. Assaulted by acronyms and terminology I couldn't even imagine the meaning of.

Finally a salesman came over and assisted us. He showed us a TV that was almost half the price of the others because it was last years model and it was only a 720 X 960 resolution. I looked at the picture and the price, smiled and said "We'll take it!" It has worked wonderfully ever since.

However...

Sunday I walked into the house, something smelled like burnt plastic. I wandered around to each room sniffing. The scent faded and I lost it. Later that night Mandy was reading a book in the living room and she heard a "POP" sound come from the TV. She did not think much about it and kept on reading. The next day I was working in the office. The whole family came in solemn and wide eyed like they had just witnessed a homicide. They all began speaking at once "The TV isn't working! I turned it on and nothing happened!" They all stammered at once. I went out and inspected it. checked the power cord, tried new sockets. Tested everything else plugged into the power strip. They were right! It had just mysteriously stopped working! Just like that our friend's life had been snuffed out in the middle of the night without any warning. I am surprisingly unaffected. The part I am lathered up about is that we haven't even started to pay off the card we put it on. It's karma for selling a broken TV for $50.