"This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me."
Those words have left Mr. Husband's mouth at least a dozen times this past weekend.
He's talking about his preshussss TV. It died.
*insert moment of silence for the dearly departed television*
It was a young TV, having only entered our lives three years ago. It was a super-bargain open box buy. In retrospect, I suppose "bargain" might be quite a bit of a stretch since it only lasted three years. I still have the TV I bought right after I graduated high school and it pretty much works, but a few weeks after Mr. Husband finally hung his 3-year old over-sized plasma TV on the wall in his Man Cave, death and devastation.
"This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me."
I might have rolled my eyes at that statement. A LOT. I mean, how great is his life that a TV dying is the worst thing of all time? I rolled my eyes so hard at his VERY REAL sadness that I could see the back of my brain, and it was holding a sign. It said, "Don't even think about letting him rush out and buy a new one."
My brain can be smart sometimes.
I decided the man would have to suffer through the horror of watching one of the other two TVs in our house, or he would have to move one of old STILL WORKING hunks of junk from the garage into The Man Cave. I didn't say anything, I just made sure to not even flinch when he brought up the subject of buying a TV. I had to be careful. In Manspeak, sometimes it's one blink for "yes," but sometimes two blinks can be considered a double-negative and interpreted to mean "yes." You just never know. It's best to hold your breath, not move a single muscle, and wait for The Man to spot something shiny and get distracted.
While I was busy ignoring all TV communication efforts, I do believe Mr. Husband tried to share a bunch of information. I think he researched how much it would cost to fix the dead TV and learned that it was almost as much as a whole new one. I think he also checked new TV prices at approximately eleventy-seventeen-hundred-forty-ten-all-possible online stores. I'm not entirely sure because I was busy making sure I didn't breath, blink, flinch, or fart. You can never be too careful, you know.
And then the Penguins game came on. I was strong and steadfast in my Suck It Up, Man! stance when he sat next to me to watch the game.
I made it through three incidents of yelling at random people on the TV screen who can't really hear you before the wall started to crumble. Fast.
Then he pulled out the Big Guns. After the game ended, the man reached over and grabbed the remote.
He flipped through a couple dozen channels.
I started to twitch.
He flipped through a few more channels, finally settling on a mind-numbingly boring show on HGTV.
I twitched some more.
When the mind-numbingly boring show broke to commercial, he flipped through more channels.
I twitched so much I probably looked like a super floppy fish out of water.
He flipped and flipped and flipped, occasionally settling on some random show that made me think it was the worst show ever created, except that a few moments later, he would find one that was even worse. In those moments, I remembered OMG, CHANNEL FLIPPING MAKES ME HOMICIDAL.
There's a reason the man has his own prehusss TV and a Man Cave. It's called FOR MY SANITY. I have to stay strong through this Worst Thing That Has Ever Happened to Him Phase.
Must. Stay. Strong.
(Psst . . . Mr. Husband, if you finish the landscaping in the backyard without whining, I may be willing to strike a deal. Please don't destroy my brain in the meantime. PLEASE.)
