A piece of me died last week. Actually, it was a piece of my TV – but the difference is negligible, really.

The cable jack – the thing that receives the feed from the cable company and allows me to watch Comedy Central specials an 82nd time – popped out. The guys at the repair shop, where my television currently resides, told me it was a common problem in an attempt to console me. It didn’t help.

What’s worse, is there doesn’t appear to be a common cure – none that cost less than $50 at least. It’s a steep fine, but a necessary one. I can’t keep reaching for my remote and trying to turn on a set that isn’t there. I caught myself doing that no more than five minutes ago. It wasn’t pretty.

See, I’m lost without my television. I’m lost without ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force’ at midnight, without ‘The OC’ on Thursdays and without ‘My Super Sweet Sixteen’ at seemingly any hour of any day of the week.

You’d think the difference wouldn’t be so striking, considering that there are plenty of other televisions in my house. But the Internet is boring, my CD collection isn’t as strong as I once believed it to be and DVDs skip when I try to play them on my laptop. Plus, I’ve read all the books that I own, and I can’t afford new ones. No, not after I just shelled out 50 bucks.

So I just sort of sit around. I’m surprisingly less efficient than I was when I had a TV. And when I had one, I was happy. I was never ‘lazy’ or ‘bored;’ I was always ‘in the middle of doing something’ and ‘entertained.’

But they tell me they can rebuild my TV, they tell me they can make it stronger and, yes, they tell me they have the technology. I should have my television back by this afternoon, tomorrow morning at the latest.

But you know what I won’t get back? My television-less weekend. Nobody tells me anything about that.

PETE FREEDMAN IS A JUNIOR NEWSPAPER MAJOR. E-MAIL HIM AT PJFREEDM@SYR.EDU.

Published on February 27, 2005 at 12:00 pm