She wanted a big-screen TV mounted on the wall opposite her bed. In between munching bonbons and polishing her nails, she’d googled TVs and had decided on a Sony 75” OLED 4K Ultra HD TV Bravia 8 Smart Google TV.
“I’m am going to watch my soaps and my K-Dramas, bigger than life from now on,” she said. “That’s what they are, and that’s the way they should be witnessed.”
At the moment she wasn’t looking directly at me, so I shook my head. Witnessed. Witnessed?
“Honey,” I said, “your bed is too close to the wall. A TV that big, well, you won’t even be able to take in the whole picture if you’re so close to the screen. You’ll have to keep scanning side to side. Believe me, dear heart, you will get a massive headache from watching, ah, witnessing your shows that way.”
She peered up at me, turning her attention from filing her nails. “Are you mocking me?” she asked.
“Mocking, why, ah, no. I’m just saying, you’ll get a huge headache from scanning a screen that size that close to you.”
“Go get me my big Sony right this instant, you hear me?”
Waiting in the checkout line at Costco, I imagined her transfixed by this behemoth TV god. The box, lying crosswise on top of the cart, teetered precariously as I moved through the checkout line.
Once I reached the car, I realized I had another problem. The box wouldn’t fit in the trunk or the back seat. So, breaking a huge sweat in the process, I unpacked it – they’d done a packaging job that rivaled the security of Fort Knox – with great effort.
After Laurel-and-Hardying it into the house, up the stairs, and into the bedroom, I sat down to recover.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked as she clipped her toenails. “Let’s get it up already.”
I took down the much smaller screen TV and noted, with a sigh, that the bracket would not accommodate the new one, as I’d expected. So, after unscrewing the old, I screwed in the new. I’d found the studs and made sure the much larger bracket was as secure as I could make it.
“Hurry up and plug it in,” she said.
I did, and using the remote turned the behemoth on.
“Give me that.”
I handed it to her.
As if she were born with it, she manipulated the new remote as if it were a genetically engineered appendage.
I said, “Do you need the instructions?”
“Does it look like I do?” she asked, popping a pink-colored bonbon in her mouth.
It did not. I turned and headed downstairs to pour myself a cup of coffee. Not more than five minutes later, she called down to me to come up.
I did.
“This TV isn’t going to work,” she said. “The screen is too big. Take it back and get me the next smaller size screen.”
“Yes, dear,” I said. Fortunately, I’d left the ladder and my drill in the room.
An odd thing happened as I removed the TV from the bracket. I suddenly felt dizzy, and as I swayed on the ladder, the TV fell from my hands. I remember watching it fall. I cried out, I know, but the next thing I knew I came to lying on the floor.
Groggy, I managed to sit up.
‘Honey,” I asked, “are you all right?”
There was no answer.
I managed to stagger to my feet, and what I saw horrified me. There lay the television on the bed, and under it lay my wife.
Struggling to get the thing off her, I finally slid it to the floor. Her head, my goodness, it was one of those sites you imagine homicide detectives can never unsee once they’ve seen it.
“Oh my,” I said, reaching for the bonbons.
I selected a white one. It was coconut. I don’t care for coconut at all, never have. Dropping it back in the box, I chose an orange one instead. It was apricot. Apricot, I love.
Lanning Lee 