The boyfriend and I have turned into quite the homebodies. It wasn't always the case. Once upon a time we were quite the party boys, but by the time we met, our club days were already waning. The scene and the people had become predictable and boring and as we had gotten older the allure had faded. Then the boyfriend landed a job with truly onerous hours, and an even worse commute and soon our nightlife was limited to weekends, if at all. Once the dogs came along we cut back even more since they had they ability to make leaving them alone feel like child abuse. The move to Bakersfield was the final straw, and for all intents and purposes, we're shut-ins.
And addicts.
We're addicted to TV.
Reality TV.
There's almost nothing we won't watch as long as someone is voted out at the end.
We make occasional exceptions for "Hoarders", or my partner's obsession with "Trauma:Life in the ER", but beyond that, if someone doesn't go by the end of the hour we don't watch it.
And then, on Tuesday, suddenly, without warning...
The TV died.
I was watching the local news and suddenly the screen went black. I could still hear the TV, since the audio is routed through the stereo, but onscreen... nothing. Don't panic, I thought, it's the local news. On a good day it's like watching a high school production of "Broadcast News", they're incompetent, someone probably just threw the wrong switch.
But 15 minutes later, still nothing.
Soon the boyfriend arrived home and I figured everything would be fine. He's MacGyver - he can fix anything, create anything out of common household items. Given enough time he could create a bazooka out of toilet paper rolls and the contents of our junk drawer.
He gave it look, pulled it away from the wall, spent time fiddling with the wires and switches on the back. When that didn't work, he took the high tech approach and gave it a whack. Hard. Repeatedly.
Still nothing.
We sat on the couch, contemplating our future. Fixing it didn't appear to be an option. Back when we had money, we had been early adopters, trend setters, and had bought one of the first generation flatscreens. Obviously they hadn't yet worked out the bugs. The company that made it had gone out of business years ago.
We thought about running to WalMart and buying a cheap one, but we were two days away from writing a check to the IRS and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't accept the excuse that we couldn't pay them because we couldn't miss "RuPaul's Drag Race".
So we sat there in silence. Compounding the situation was the fact that just days earlier we'd lost all the lights in the kitchen. No idea why. Like the TV, they just stopped working. The property management company showed about as much concern as they had for the roach infestation, and my partner had been reduced to cooking by candlelight. We were slowly regressing back to "Little House on the Prairie" and we wondered what was next to go. The internet? Indoor plumbing? At the rate we were going, by this time next week we'd be churning butter.
We tried to look on the bright side. We didn't NEED television. We weren't a slave to it, right? Besides, there were things to do, laundry to be folded and roaches to be disposed of. We'd be productive. We busied ourselves with chores and were pretty proud of ourselves for accomplishing so much. When we were finished my boyfriend looked and me and said "So.... ready for bed?
It was 8:45.
Night number two, the withdrawals started to kick in. We were missing "America's Next Top Model". We realized we still had audio and figured we could at least listen to it, but it became quickly obvious that Tyra Banks just doesn't work as Ye Olde Time Radio Hour.
Thursday night promised to be more than depressing. We were missing "Survivor" AND "Project Runway". I was laying on the floor, playing with the dogs, trying to convince myself that throwing a tennis ball against the wall was just as exciting as watching Michael Kors and Nina Garcia. The boyfriend came home, and as he was passing the TV, he gave a huge whack, out of spite.
And it came on!
It was a miracle! A TV miracle! Like ShamWow!
And just in time. We were afraid to touch it for fear of disturbing whatever juju had brought it back from the dead. We watched our shows, and as we shut it off for the night, it was with the knowledge that it may have been a fluke and it may not come back on again. But this morning, up popped "Good Morning Kern County", in all it's stupid glory.
There's really no explanation for it. It's a complete mystery.
To paraphrase Heidi Klum, "Somedays you are on, and the next, you're auf".
