You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Getting a phone call from a company trying to upsell me on more electronic insurance.
The phone rings the other day. It’s a long distance number from Dallas.
“Sir this is Gladys at HH Gregg. I see that your flat screen warranty is expiring after 2 years.”
I take a moment to think about who this lady is.
HH Gregg?
Before I can put it together, she launches into the next sentence on her prepared pitch sheet.
“Sir, we’d like to offer you a special plan to renew your policy to keep the great coverage you have been receiving since you bought your plasma 2 years ago..”
Suddenly I figure out who this lady is. Suddenly I figure out what she is.
She represents the company that wouldn’t replace my plasma when the incident happened. She represents the company that sold me a new plasma and then pushed the warranty plan for an extra 200 dollars. And then when the unfortunate incident went down, they left me at the alter like a run-a-way bride at a shot gun wedding.
I cut her off.
“Mam. I don’t need a policy for a TV that I haven’t owned for 2 years.”
She stops.
“Huh?”
“Yeah. You should have been there for me two years ago. Now you’re just pissing me off.”
She can’t possibly know what I’m talking about. “Oh,” she stammers.
“Thanks anyway,” I say.
Click.
The phone call triggers memories that I haven’t had for years.
I remember the day I put the expensive, brand new TV monitor at the curb with the garbage cans and recyclables.
This was 2, maybe 3 years ago.
And after 2 weeks of looking at the big rectangle of cracked dreams in the front room, I finally decide to get rid of it.
The constant reminder of what it was and what it had become was too much and it was time to go.
I thought about burning it and placing the ashes in an urn over the mantel. I was unclear how the toxicity of melting plastics and transistors would affect me and I don’t need any more citations from the EPA so I scrapped that idea.
I thought about calling together old friends to have a eulogy, a memorial, a proper burial. Anyone who had ever watched a last second touchdown pass or Snooky getting a high hard one from any number of vampires in an enchanted field on this picture perfect screen would be invited to reminisce.
So there Old Petey Plasma sits, in the front room by the door. Once the center point of my existence, like the sun in my solar system, Petey Plasma is now a black hole of interplanetary nothingness, where no light or sound will ever escape again.
I walk up to Old Petey and stare at him lovingly. He is quiet and reflective. I see specs of dust gathering on his perfect glass face.
He reminds me of an old dog you have loved through thick and thin who finally has to be put down. I stare at Petey Plasma. I stroke his smooth metallic head and tell him I love him. I tell him that nobody ever ate my slipper like he did or chewed the leg of the coffee table better. I tell Petey there would never be a better audio/visual device ever and I believe I wept a tear.
I yell for my son and his friend to do the deed.
My son’s friend laments; “This is so crazy!”
They too feel the awkwardness. It is uncomfortable and just wrong.
It’s wrong like showering with young boys is wrong JERRY SANDUSKY.
It’s blasphemous like covering the Holy Bible with bacon grease and setting it on fire.
It’s disrespectful like pushing an old lady off a bus bench.
In case you missed it, my 50 inch plasma was destroyed by my daughter prior to Christmas. She had a few minutes to kill so she decide to kill my TV.
It was an accident. She was flicking quarters, whatever the hell that is, and the little metallic sphere got away from her.
I wasn’t there and the details of the incident are slow to be revealed. Getting the true account is a little like going to the Magic Castle and hoping Houdini will tell you how he escaped from locked boxes.
I think back to that James Bond Movie; Gold Finger. Remember the big Asian body guard, TOP JOB. He was a portly fellow just a hair under 400 pounds. He didn’t talk and wore a bad suit. He sported a fedora that he threw at his adversaries when the mood struck him. He tossed that hat like a magical death Frisbee through the air. It sliced off the heads of statues and chased James Bond across the planet. This is how I envision this horrifying moment. My daughter is the Top Job of my house and my plasma is James Bond trying to save the world.
The way she describes it, the quarter left her fingers like an assassins blade and just errantly whizzed through the glass.
HUH? REALLY? WHAT?
But this is how she describes this atrocity.
She says one minute there was Jersey Shore and the next, just silence, plasma gas escaping, and the flabbergasted faces of several teenagers suddenly wondering how to fix a plasma without a father finding out.
Did you yell? everyone asks. Did you beat her like a Russian Spy with a NYC phone books so as not to leave any marks?
No. Strangely, I was calm.
I figure she told me the truth, that it was just an accident. I can’t bring back the dead. I’m no technological shaman, so what are you going to do right? What use is it to yell?
So the boys pick up Petey and carry him to the curb. They place him on the grass with the boxes and the other refuse. It is a shock to my senses. It is like rolling in a field of fire breathing skunks. My eyes begin burning and my skin turns to fire.
We stare at the Plasma on the front lawn like a Viking funeral pyre is about to erupt.
I feel like someone needs to say something.
“Can’t they fix it?” my son’s somewhat dense friend blurts out.
No they can’t fix it, I retort. We can kill Osama Bin Laden with a hand grenade tied to a Garmin unit strapped to a kite from half way across the world, but patch Petey’s broken screen? Not a freaking chance.
I tell the boys that a repair man does offer me 30 bucks for the parts. The boys eyes light up. They are 19 years old and 30 bucks will buy them something they want.
Really, they inquire at once. Can we have it?
I stare at them blankly.
You want Petey?
Yeah.
Whatever.
And like that, the boys toss Petey into the back of my son’s pick up truck and drive away.
I feel like the old Indian in the Give a Hoot Don’t Pollute commercials as a tear streams down my face and Petey drives away to an uncertain burial of hijinx, roof testing, or diabolical transistor organ harvesting.
Poor Petey Plasma.
And that’s crazy.
