Funny TV Story

I'm not sure how this story is related to this blog, but it shows how desperately we crave the media.

In the early 1990s, I attended SDA Bocconi in Milan, Italy. I was recently married and had a young son, about 3 months old. We were graduate-student poor which, if you've never been poor or a graduate student, you'll have a hard time understanding. Let's just say that in order to save money on food, my wife became adept at cooking chicken hearts into pasta sauce. Don't gross - out! They were good, just a little chewy.

Despite living on chicken hearts and spaghetti, we had everything we needed to be happy... except for a television. My wife was looking through the paper for used TVs we could afford and called a woman who needed to get rid of her set because she was upgrading to the latest Sony model and simply didn't have room. After getting her to talk, my wife managed to talk her into giving it to us for free if we would cart it away that night.

We grabbed a taxi as soon as I got home from school and found a woman who had a strange vibe to her. She was rethinking giving the TV away, but my wife convinced her to go through with it. I quickly unhooked it and started moving it to the elevator. It must have weighed 200 lbs. I had no idea where we would put this thing in our little student apartment.

While I was slowly moving this set into the hallway, my wife kept the lady talking. As it turned out, she was giving us the TV to spite her boyfriend. The new TV (hers) was already there, but he had done something to make her very angry, so she was giving away his TV.

About the time I got the TV into the elevator, the boyfriend showed up. Apparently he had been downstairs for a while, but since I had the elevator blocked off, he had to take the stairs up the 5 floors. He asked me what I was doing with his TV. I told him to talk to the lady of the house. While he walked into the apartment to yell at her, I maneuvered the old set into the elevator and started downstairs.

A quarrel ensued that I could hear at least three flights down. The cab driver helped me lift the TV into the cab when I realized that my wife and baby son were still up stairs. As I hurried back into the building, she came huffing down the stairs with the baby carrier and we stepped quickly to the awaiting taxi and headed home.

I don't know exactly what happened upstairs or how my wife got away. The set was old and the channels had to be tuned manually. It lasted about two months before giving out on us and never worked very well.

The sacrifices we'll make to watch our morning news shows!