By Jim Hagarty
2007
Don’t try this at home. That’s where I tried it and it was a bit of a disaster.
Many disasters have their origins in ideas that pop into people’s heads and this one fell into that category. It put me in mind of a boss I once had who gave me these instructions after I had wandered into his office with an idea. “The next time you bring me an idea, I’m sending you home for three days,” he said, with a smirk. “And if you bring me a good idea, you’re fired!”
I thought that was a bit harsh, but now I’m not so sure.
It started with a father-son coffee shop chat about various life issues, ending on a topic of great mutual interest: TV. Specifically, in our case, the state of our old TV which simply refused to die. A good third of the stations we should have been getting simply didn’t come in any more. And the people who appeared in the shows we did get all looked as though they were suffering from first-degree sunburns. On other stations, it appeared as though we’d accidentally tapped into a grainy NASA feed of human activity on the moon.
And while, despite all these deficiencies, we had been generally happy with the old black box in the corner, the more we discussed its demerits, the unhappier we became. On our return home, like a sign from beyond, a flyer awaited us, displaying on the first page a photo of a new TV at what seemed like an incredible price. By coincidence, the family had saved up that very amount for a new microwave oven for the kitchen but in our passionate embrace of the TV bargain we saw before us, we just knew the oven could wait.
This might help to explain the secrecy behind our plot. Instinct said a tribe-wide discussion revolving around TV/microwave choices might not end in the desired result. And that’s why we landed on a great idea: Knowing the two females in the house were about to head to the same coffee shop we had recently left, we decided to go buy the TV, bring it home and set it up and be sitting happily watching it when they returned in an hour or so.
Wouldn’t they be overjoyed!
I am here now to say that, while impulse buying might have its advantages and drawbacks, making a major purchase in the time some people take to shave can be considered a mistake.
The first part went fairly smoothly. We located the right aisle, heaved the boxed TV onto a shopping cart and made it through the checkout. Things got sticky after that. In our haste to get home, the TV jerked off the back seat and fell, face first, onto the floor of the van, a sickening thud that TV lovers the world over never want to hear.
Secondly, combining this idea with another great idea to gas up before going home, we got boxed into a gas pump lineup longer than in a war-torn country, behind a guy whose movements would make a snapping turtle look like a roadrunner.
But we made it home, we ripped and tore, we moved furniture, we plugged in our treasure. Exhausted, we sat and watched our booty as the other family members walked in to two surprises: A new TV and an empty oven-purchase jar.
Knowing what I know now and given the ensuing existential crisis that suddenly enveloped the up-to-then serene family atmosphere, I was brought to this conclusion:
Sometimes there’s a very good reason for buyer’s remorse.
