Tomorrow is my birthday. Since I live far from my family we have a tradition of sending presents for our birthdays. I started it sending flowers to my mother, and she and my sister continued it over the years.
The presents were mainly flowers: something that you can order from anywhere but it doesn’t travel far because it’s prepared close to the recipient. The tradition was working fine… until today. I got a wonderful orchid and a TV.
I had two orchids and the oldest and most precious died during the moving from Belgium to Madrid. I guess it froze and nothing could be done regardless of all my care. So this new orchid was very well welcomed since it was a phalaenopsis, like that one. But the TV… well, I’m not those people that think TV as evil, like those parents forbidding their children to watch TV. I just think it’s useless. I watched a lot of TV during my childhood, because it was the only way of enjoying movies and series at home. Nowadays we have internet and we can watch whatever we want and whenever we can. I don’t need a TV for that. Since I lived in Belgium I got used to not watching regular TV. And when I say that, I mean not waiting for my favorite show or not listening to some shouting contest program. I am happy with my peace and happy with my right to choose what to watch in my laptop, which has a wonderful screen and nice loudspeakers. And we have a beamer for special days.
Have I ever mentioned that we moved to a very small apartment and that, even I try, I am not great at organizing? Don’t get me wrong, I love the apartment and the area, but I was used to live in bigger places and I accumulated a lot of junk over the years. I had to throw out and give away a lot of things, and a TV is not something really small that won’t pass unnoticed. I had to make place for it, but I haven’t plugged it and don’t intend to. I’ll look at it as it is for a couple of days, to see if I really feel the need of using it.
I’m feeling guilty and ungrateful, but since I got the call in the morning to tell me about the delivery of the TV I’ve been quite cranky without a clear reason. I can just think that I’ve always said that I did not want a TV and now this black thing is looking at me and saying “Can you imagine how much wool could you get with the money spent on me? You see? you had to move your antique mandolin so that I could be here? And I do nothing, I’m just a junk TV. ”.