The Mysterious Malady of the TV

Thank you for your encouraging comments on yesterday’s blog posting. I am working on it and will try to have another installment tomorrow. Monday night, however, I had a real life mystery, albeit a small one. I was watching the news Monday night when suddenly, the TV went blank. I mean, no warning, no fading away, just zap! No picture; no sound. I checked plug-ins, I tried every trick I knew with the channel selector, I yelled, “Open, Sesame!” Nothing worked. So, I called AT&T. The patient woman on the other end of the line tried this, that, and the other and I was getting tired. “Mrs. Manos,” she said, close to being frustrated, “we’ve just got to find what’s wrong.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not going to pull the TV out from the wall tonight.  Maybe it just needs another television. Thanks for your help. Good night” “I’m so, so sorry”, the voice in the phone said. She was really taking this personally. Assuring her that she had done her best and, after all, there was life after television, I hung up. It was truly mysterious and quite unsolvable.

Thinking back on the problem, the television may have felt as I do often–fed up with bad news! And, it just couldn’t take any more. Whatever, I was TV-less Monday night and Tuesday. Tuesday night, rescue came knocking on my door.

I don’t know how the weather is where you live but here in Northwest Arkansas, we may have had two days of sun out of the seventeen days of December. It has been cloudy, dark, and cold, Oh, and damp! That is not conducive to feeling chipper and bright. It is conducive to closed blinds, lights on in every room, and the fireplace going. And there I was, no blithering television to divert my attention either. Anyway, Tuesday night, the doorbell rang and there on the porch stood Dawn and the children with food! They had brought supper. Soon afterward, Matt came, bent on a mission of mercy. He pulled the television out from the wall, he and Dawn looked and he discovered the fault lay in a worn-out power strip. Then, after another call to AT&T, he got that technological marvel called television working again!

I’m grateful for the expertise of my son and I’m thankful that my daughter-in-law deduced that it would be a good night for family togetherness. They did wonders to dispel the gloom. Even though the sun had gone down and the night was still cloudy and cold, it was sunny in my heart. My family is my feel-good tonic. And now, once again, I can listen to all the bad news I want!