Applying Lessons to Appliance Dependence

My three kids have united. Like the great coalition of Allied powers in World War II, Churchill, Stalin and FDR, they have witnessed injustice, barbarism, and inhumane conditions, they’ve put aside their political differences and they’ve formed an unlikely bond because they feel their cause is just, and they fear inaction is far too risky. Our kids do not unite very often. In fact, these are the same kids who spend much of their time disowning one another for every reason imaginable. I’ve lost track how many times Christopher, at 4, has angrily uttered the words “You’re not my brudder!” to Alex or Adam. He has already learned how to cleverly play one brudder against the other in order to get some sort of favorable result.

The root of this UBF (United Brudderly Front) is a rapidly failing television set, and a ruthless dictatorial-like father who appears unwilling to remedy it. Yes, our 17 year old TV set is on the fritz. It’s a 38-inch Mitsubishi console set. Yes, a Mitsubishi! Stop laughing. (Any company ambitious enough to make cars and TVs deserves some respect – I’ll bet Ford or Chrysler wishes they had a TV Division to fall back on these days!). By sheer cubic volume, it’s the biggest piece of furniture in our house. It’s a monstrous TV set by today’s standards. It’s so big, our entire family hides behind it during tornado warnings. But now, after years of faithful service, the old set is on its last legs. The picture, particularly during DVDs and their beloved Wii games, randomly switches off and goes black. The sound is still there, just no picture. This has been going on for the better part of this year. Now most dads would relish this opportunity, especially dads who have yet to join the Flat Screen LCD Plasma High-Def Blue Ray revolution which is all the rage. In fact, I know there are dozens of dads who would give anything to be in my position right now…a legitimate excuse to run out to Best Buy and pick up the TV of their Dreams.

But my kids are going up against history and a time honored parental lesson trap. This lesson is the quintessential parental fallback: “Nothing Should Come Too Easily”. When I was 12 or so, my family had a similar TV situation. We had this classic TV which stood on four legs. I grew up convinced it was the original color TV from 1952. But toward the end, this TV required hours of warm-up before working, and even then there were no guarantees it would ever turn on. As kids, we would sit and stare at this thin rainbow-like line of colors running across the middle of the black screen. Same kind of problem my kids are facing today…we could hear it, we just couldn’t see it. The only difference was we couldn’t play our Atari video games. And it just so happened, it started doing this during one of my Buffalo Bills’ rare magical football seasons. They didn’t have many of those in the 1980s. Me and my 3 brothers spent that entire football season “listening” to games in front of our TV. Very frustrating. Now, looking back, I don’t think my dad was trying to teach us some sort of lesson. This was, if I recall, right before Reagan-omics kicked in, and there are financial realities that TV-loving children just can never fully understand. In hindsight, our lack of a quality TV was tied more directly to the ineffective economic policies of Jimmy Carter, Inflation, a stagnant stock market, and the Mid-East oil embargo. But at the time, it sure felt like Dad was teaching us a lesson. And now that my kids are in a similar situation, I feel obligated to pass that phantom lesson on to them…for their own good I guess.

Well, I’ve since learned this lesson doesn’t apply to all household appliances. In a rare “Perfect Storm” scenario in our household, our clothes dryer suddenly stopped drying clothes at the same time our television set stopped televising visuals. I procrastinated for a day or two, then ordered a new heating element (from eBay, to save a few bucks). It took 3 or 4 days for the part to arrive. I’m here to tell you, a week without a dryer can have a devastating effect on a household. There have been many infamous work stoppages throughout history…the 1977 Sanitation Strike in NYC, the Air Traffic Controllers strike in 1981…none compare to the Galucki Clothes Dryer Stoppage of 2009. Like some sort of perverse Doctor Seuss story, the clothes in our house piled up and multiplied in the most unlikely places. Clean clothes that wouldn’t dry hung from light fixtures; dirty clothes that couldn’t be washed bulged out of overstuffed hampers; our garage was converted into some sort of makeshift Dry Cleaners with power tools holding up clotheslines; and my wife Laurie actually resorted to drying clothes in the oven!…complete, unimaginable chaos gripped our home. The scramble to find a clean, dry, matching pair of socks each morning became a life or death struggle.

Finally the part arrived and the dryer was repaired. And many lessons were learned by all parties involved. The UBF eventually got the new TV they struggled for and seemed to appreciate it even more (the bad news is we now have to find a new hiding place during tornado warnings since flat screens don’t offer very much protection); our empty closets are once again full of clean, dry clothes; and I have a new appreciation for the volume of laundry my wife deals with on a daily basis. Although, I secretly must admit, I really do miss the heavenly aroma of fresh baked socks! I prefer mine extra crunchy!