Basking in glory of DIY
It was during the kids’ Christmas visit that my son walked into my bedroom and saw the TV mounted on the wall. That comment launched a sequence of events that led to an unlikely moment of personal triumph and pride.
This started when he mocked my low-tech setup.
“My desktop computer is bigger than that,” he said.
He had a point, I suppose. As someone who never watches TV except for old movies right before falling asleep, I don’t need anything fancy. But lately I’d noticed strange swirly lines on the screen, but what did I expect? The TV was from 2009.
“Get a big one,” my son said. “They’re cheap.”
He sent me links to some smart TVs — all the size of compact cars and less expensive than a designer handbag.
I bought a reasonably larger 50-inch Samsung and hired a nice young man to come and mount it on the wall. I now had not one remote control (for the cable box) but two. Even after a quick lesson in how to manage them, I was intimidated by the smart-TV remote, and decided not to touch it, to avoid screwing up the works.
For two whole weeks, I was basking in the easy watching of a huge screen. I hadn’t realized how small my former screen was and how blurry those actors appeared on the screen. I watched “An American in Paris” four times through, because thrice of Gene Kelly dancing in that bright, big color was not enough.
And then came the day I was cleaning the room and I knocked the scary remote to the floor; it landed buttons down and something got switched on, or off. My big screen was now filled with floating waves of text that made no sense. I’d turn off the cable box and reboot and my movie would return, only to be interrupted by the floating waves again. Maybe if I tossed the scary remote to the floor again I could reverse the damage, but no.
The TV guy could come back and help, but I’d wait for days. Could I live without my TCM and my old Bette Davis movies? That was asking too much. And so I rolled up my sleeves and set out to fix this.
I remembered the time, when I was very young, having a splinter in my palm and deciding I would remove it myself. It hurt, and took quite a lot of courage and precision, but out I took it. This TV fix would be like that.
YouTube will tell you how to fix anything. I sat down with pencil and paper and watched several videos and then returned to the bedroom to attack the problem.
Unplug the TV. Wait five minutes. Plug it back in. Easy. And then I wandered my way through a series of 10 steps (using the scary remote!) to page along the lines on the screen, clicking this and that and then backing up to redo a step because it still wasn’t right. The goal was to turn off something that had been turned on when the scary remote hit the floor.
I’d come to the last step. I held my breath.
Sergeant York appeared on the screen (Gary Cooper, swoon), and he stayed. I’d plucked out the splinter on the screen, all by myself. It hurt some, as these things do.
I was awash in a deep sense of satisfaction. I texted my son, and he texted back that he was proud of me.
With my newfound confidence and some YouTube help, who knows what else I can fix.
Next up, my dryer? It’s been making that funny noise again.