We have all been there, and it starts so innocently.
“Do you want to look at a new TV dear?” you hear your wife ask from the living room.
You nod in semi-agreement and before long you are in a showroom and looking at a 70-inch monstrosity that turns National Geographic insect specials into your own personal stereomicroscope.
Somehow, heaven knows how, you blink and in your hands is a receipt stating at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, YOUR new television experience will begin.
One problem.
Upon arrival home, you begin to envision your new space (and experience), and the elephant in the room raises its trunk and the TV stand you thought for years was perfect is no longer perfect.
In the back of your mind, you vaguely recall the words, “wall mount…and drill…”
Soon, it all comes back.
“Now we can get rid of the TV stand,” you remember your wife saying in the store.
And you remember agreeing.
On top of the now useless faux mahogany TV stand are years of photographs, trinkets and old batteries.
Where do they go?
A voice calls out from the kitchen this time.
“We need a corner wall unit.”
Mysteriously, you are transported to a furniture store where you find your head nodding again. Once again, you see in your hand a receipt and you are driving to the back of the store and loading a Queen Anne frosted glass door six-foot corner unit.
Time passes.
A knock on the door awakes you from the Tuesday afternoon news slumber and the smiling face of a TV installer greets you.
“We're here to put your TV on the wall sir,” he says, showing all of his teeth. “Do you mind if we come in?”
Before you can swallow a breath of air, he and his super technology associate have swept into your life, and you feel strangely old, in fact.
After setting the TV up in the living room and taking the old stand into the garage close to the fridge you replaced last year, you see a pattern developing, or perhaps it could just be the vertigo you developed going down the stairs into the pit of despair.
You think you are done, but deep down you know better.
“Dear,” the voice says. “Our corner unit doesn't match the wall unit.”
Swoosh…
“The carpet…”
“The paint…”
You sit down, on your comfy couch with your new remote control that your 12-year-old has to show you how to use and you watch the same TV show, the same news, and listen to the same commercials.
Out of the corner of the couch, you see your wife looking at the living room, smiling at the furniture, smiling at you (that scares you), and then frown as she looks at the couch YOU love.
“Dear,” she says sweetly. “Can we?”
You jump up and down and hear yourself saying the words, “If we replace the couch, we are finished, right?”
Your cowering wife nods weakly.
“Let's go,” you say, grabbing your burning wallet and driving to meet your now best friend.
Two days later, the new couch arrives.
As you look around, the living room looks nice, clean, fresh and bright.
You hear the voice.
“Dear, what do you think about the kitchen cabinets?”
Isn't life wonderful?
