We were pretty excited about our big screen. We had it for about five years before something happened to the screen, and some of the colors stopped working. We watched our shows with a greenish tint for a couple of years. Then a neighbor kid took a bat to it.
That was Neighbor Kid Incident #1.
I was able to scrounge up this photo of our TV from an old blog post. The cracks are from the neighbor kid hitting it with a bat. Fortunately it was a flimsy screen, so even though I use the word, "shatter," it didn't break into tiny pieces.
Interestingly, some neighbors down the street had the exact same TV we did, and they put it out on the curb for $50. No one bought it, but I kept eyeing it. Eventually, they put it out on the curb with no sign. One day, I stopped by to talk to them, figuring I could offer then 20 bucks for it, but they weren't home. I decided that since it was on the curb with no sign, and they weren't home, I'd take just it. So I wheeled it down the sidewalk and put it in my garage.
(I should add that we didn't know these neighbors very well. We lived by them for about ten years, and even though we were friendly, they didn't speak a lot of English, so we had some communication barriers. We did take them a Christmas veggie tray one year, and they reacted kind of strangely, and it dawned on me, as I walked home from their house, that they were probably Muslims. Oops! But, hey! Everyone needs to eat a vegetable sometime in December, right?)
When Scotty got home, we swapped the TVs, but then we had a bit of a predicament. If we put our TV out on the curb for bulk pick-up, it would look like we took the neighbor's TV and shattered the screen. We live on a "busy-ish" street, so we did what any people of sound mind would do... we wheeled the broken TV across the busy street by dark of night and left it in front of someone else's house.
Okay, okay. That sounds bad. And in some ways, it was. But let me expound a bit. We have a quadruplex kitty-corner from our house, and they always have a big pile of stuff out front for bulk pick-up, so we simply added our broken TV to their pile. I'd like to think this accomplished multiple things:
1. It got rid of the TV
2. It made the TV untraceable to us
3. It made things easier for the garbage collector
In the end, we were actually quite thoughtful.
I don't remember how long we had the neighbor's TV in our house, but eventually, Nicky put a Wii controller through the screen, and we had ourselves another shattered big screen. It still worked for a while (it just had a big black spot), but eventually it started making a weird noise. Again, we didn't want the neighbor's to see their broken TV in front of our house (even though significant time had passed) so by dark of night, we wheeled it out to the busy street for bulk pick-up, only this time, someone took it before the garbage collectors came by!
We were kind of surprised that someone went through the effort to haul it off - but also... not that surprised. Believe it or not, we ended up accidentally finding it! My mom had a hoarder neighbor who went around collecting old TVs, and then he would pile them in his driveway. We were driving to my mom's one day, and there was our TV!
Around the time we got rid of the second big screen, we made our family room into a bedroom and a storage room. Since we no longer had a family room, we just a bought a small TV to keep in the living room until we finished our basement.
Then we had Neighbor Kid Incident #2.
This time, a neighbor kid was playing at our house, and he took a magnetic dart board and leaned it against the new living room TV to throw darts at. One of the darts hit the TV and broke the screen. My kids were freaking out, but I told them we weren't going to worry about it, and we weren't going to tell his parents. But when his mom came to get him, the first thing out of Daisy's mouth was, "Derek broke our TV!"
A few days later, Derek's dad showed up at our house with a new TV - a much nicer one than the one that had been damaged. I felt so bad!
A few other TVs have come and gone from our home. Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head...
One TV milestone of note is when we got a flat screen for our bedroom. I'm very much pro-bedroom-TV. My bedroom, that is. I feel completely entitled to have a TV in my bedroom and have never gone without. My kids, on the other hand? Uh-uh. No. They don't get TVs in their bedrooms. But me? It is my privilege and my right to watch TV in bed.
Anyway, when we got a flat screen TV for our bedroom, we hung it on the wall, but we had a log canopy bed, and the canopy poles blocked my view of the TV.
My bed circa 2012
The solution? CHAINSAW!!!
Scotty hacked those poles down and freed up my view.
The things we'll do for TV.
Anyway, a couple of months ago, we had Neighbor Kid Incident #3.
Even though my kids don't have TVs in their rooms, we have an extra TV that we occasionally let Zoe and Eva watch a movie on in their room. One weekend, they earned a movie in their room, and the TV was still in there when a neighbor kid came over to play. Eva and the boy were throwing toys, and the boy hit and shattered the TV.
A few days later, his dad texted me and said, "I understand Huckleberry broke your TV. How much do I owe you?" And of course, I told him not to worry about it. I feel like I can't ask my neighbors to replace the TVs their kids break while under my supervision.
(Haven't heard from him since!)
I'd venture to say that we've lost more TVs to neighbor kids than the average family, but hey! We've gotta excel at something! Now pass me the remote!
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