May 27 2006
Cruel Sports of the Past: Wrestling TV
A friend of mine is moving to a different city, so he’s paring down his worldly goods. He’s moving in with his girlfriend, who has way better stuff, so he’s only going to move the creme de la crap, which did not include his fairly large and fairly new TV. Actually, I was amazed that in half a century of life in an ultra-acquisitive society, he had so little to move. Once he’d given away the undesirables, all that was left were two suitcases of clothes, a box of articles he’d had published in his long career as a journalist, a trunk of sentimental souvenirs, and a few boxes of books. That’s it. The polar opposite of Me, who is as acquisitive as a particularly greedy magpie, especially when it comes to shiny things.
This is how I ended up at the opposite end of the city, wrestling the Donated Diversion Box down several flights of steep stairs. Suddenly, my friend had more stairs than I remembered, including a flight with no handrail, also a bad back, which meant that little Orphan Suzy was on her own with the big Orphan Appliance. For those of you who are foolish enough to want to try this at home, be warned. Wrestling a TV, unlike wrestling on TV, is not fixed, though you may well have to be after the battle is over.
Side effects include, but are not limited to: swearing, both below and above what little breath you have after the first few steps; sweating; disbelief in friend’s alleged back injury (why had I never heard of it before? Hmmm?); regretting day of birth (anniversary of which is only a week and a day away, you last-minute shoppers); partial to total destruction of manicure; miscellaneous scratches; aching muscles, some of which you didn’t know you had; a longing for continued ignorance of said muscles; relief at finally setting the damned thing down, only to realize you have set it on your foot; and finally realizing your brother is so right not to have a TV at all.
No wonder they invented delivery services.