My TV's Ethnicity

In an earlier post, I explained that my TV was broken, that it wouldn't work no matter what I did. So when Josiah moved in last week, his parents helped me out by driving me down to the repair shop to take in the television.

I must explain that mapquest was quite misleading in its estimated time of 17 minutes to get there. First of all, the shop is located smack dab in the middle of the Spanish part of town. Spanish part = narrower streets. It took us an hour to get there. Why Philips doesn't have a closer repair place to where I live, I am baffled. Anyhow, we got the TV to it's repair shop, I paid my $50 deposit, and headed back home.

A couple days later, I got a message on my answering machine asking me to call and explain what the problem was with the TV. I was a little confused, since I explained pretty clearly when I dropped it off. Nevertheless, on Monday, I called the store and explained thoroughly how my TV set was broken. They said, "OK" and told me they would call me when they figured out what the problem was.

An hour or so later, I got a call saying the TV was fixed and ready to pick up. Why, I wondered, was it fixed so fast? Suspicious... So yesterday, Josiah and I took my car from Hyde Park to the repair shop to pick up the television. Mapquest's directions this time conveniently took us through the "lock your doors and pray we don't get shot" part of Chicago. Ok, maybe it wasn't that bad, but it was pretty ghetto. We spoke with the technician who worked on my TV... he plugged it in for us and it worked great. Then he explained that he did absolutely nothing to fix it, he even opened it up and checked to make sure everything was fine, and it was. Josiah and I brought the TV back, plugged it in, and voila, worked fine.

I have since played with many theories as to why my television acted as it did. Maybe the outlet it was plugged into was messed up. But I have it plugged into the same outlet now, and it's working great. Maybe, as my grandmother suggested, the car trip to the repair store jostled something back into place. Perhaps. But I have decided on a much better theory:

My TV is of Spanish descent. Why else would it suddenly start working again once it got to the Spanish part of town? It must have felt comforted to be home, around people speaking the same language, who looked like family. That comfort gave my TV the strength it needed to do its daily job once again.

Next time your TV is broken, maybe you could try playing some ethnic music to soothe its homesickness. Maybe it would have saved me $50.