Make sure you take the book.

For exactly one month I lived alone in a one bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side. And I was blissfully alone for that month with my own bathroom, kitchen, and my own living room. What I did not have, but what I definitely needed was a TV.

So, about three days into living at this apartment I went to Best Buy with my friend Irene to buy a TV. I spent, I don’t know about 10 minutes, looking and quickly chose the model I wanted based on price and appearance. I had no idea about quality, etc. In my opinion this is what men are for. Unfortunately, most of my adult life has been spent without one actually in my life, so… One of the guys who worked there picked up the TV and carried it over his head, like it was no heavier than say a book and promptly walked it out to the street, dropping it down for us to take over. I thanked him and Irene and I proceeded to pick up the box using the handles on either side. People, this box weighed a zillion pounds. I’m not kidding. Irene and I together had once moved our entire apartment from the second floor to the first floor with no help. You should have seen us struggling down the street. We had only four blocks to walk and I thought we weren’t going to make it. I considered just leaving the TV there on the street, but I really like to watch TV. I mean people were coming out of businesses to laugh and point while we struggled down the street.

Finally, we get it back to my place, plugged it in, it turned on and we left to go get something to eat. I come home after dinner, sit down on the couch and promptly realize that the TV does not have any sound. Let’s get something straight here people, I was not dragging that thing back to Best Buy, so I had no choice but to figure out how to make it work. What occurred next was an hour of reading the manual (something I’m morally opposed to but one must make allowances) only to find that indeed there was no answer. So, being the nice girl I am, I proceeded to smack the side of the TV and voila, within six seconds I had sound.

Now, what I have had for the last four years is a TV that whenever bumped or nudged must be smacked on its side in order for sound to be restored. It gets even better than that because it isn’t one spot that it must be hit in, but a never ending moving spot that tortures me to no end. Originally I used my hand for the task of beating the TV into submission, but sadly one time, with a day old manicure no less, I was smacking the TV so hard that I actually put my hand through the side of it. Listen, Lost was coming on in three minutes, it was very dire circumstance. Of course, it was at that point that I actually stopped being blonde for five seconds and came up with the brilliant idea to use an object to hit the TV. And this is how the biography of Georgia O’Keeffe came to find its home at the bottom of my TV.

Here are a couple of fun facts about the TV. One, did you know that the sound for the TV is not the same as the sound that comes from say your DVD player? Me neither. I know this because it is only the TV function in which I have no sound, I can play DVDs to my little hearts content. Also, did you know that if you have a TV whose sound goes out when it’s bumped at all that possibly, maybe the best place to live is not in an unstable house on the corner of a street where large trucks drive by.

Recently, “A” and I were talking about what someone would take if they broke in. I do realize if you’ve come to my house you really are desperate to steal and thus deserve to find something. We thought it would be nice if we left a note on the TV that said, “if stolen, please make sure to take book. You’ll see.”