Williamʼs Guide to Buying a Television

by William Jackson on 2011-01-02

Step 1: Find someone who will give you a television for free.

Youʼre done!

Case Study 1

The summer before my senior year of high school, I got a job deliveringfurniture and appliances for a store in downtown Waco, Texas. The place soldwashers, dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, beds, couches, televisions, andeven lawnmowers. They also fixed cars and sold tires. It was like a small townversion of Sears, I guess.

Anyway, the place was closing for good at the end of the summer, and businesswas really slow, and I got to know the sales floor guys fairly well, and one ofthem decided to buy a new television from the store where he worked. I guess hegot a good deal from himself? So he asked me if I wanted his old television(which he happened to bring to work).

It was better than the box we had at home at the time, so I called my dad and hepicked me up from work that afternoon with the car with a big trunk, and we tookhome a new (to us) television. I feel like I deserved more cred with the sibsthan I got for that.

Case Study 2

Rebecca and I got married but we didnʼt have a television and wedidnʼt have plans to buy one. Shortly after Rebecca was called as anassistant librarian at church, she was there one evening with the main buildinglibrarian. They were replacing the old televisions, which were just going to bethrown away, and Rebecca asked if we could have it, and suddenly we had atelevision!

It was actually quite nice because even though it was from 1995 or so it wasonly used at most once a week, so the picture quality was really good.

One of the other librarians got kind of mad when she found out we got atelevision and she didnʼt.

Case Study 3

Rebecca and I moved from our little apartment into a house over a year ago, andwe were still sporting that old ex-church-library television. One of the thingsthat bugged us a little was that it was so old that it didnʼt supportclosed captions. And we had to get one of those digital converter boxes. But wegot along just fine.

Then one day a friend from church started asking around for someone who wanted atelevision. They had been given it, but it was too big for their TV stand orcabinet or whatever. Rebecca jumped at it and they gave it to us. Pros: it wasnewer, so it supported closed captions and digital signals. Cons: it weighedtwice as much as me and it broke the cart we had our old television on.

So this new (to us) beast of a television has been sitting on the floor in thecorner of our living room for a few weeks. When we got it we started looking fora TV stand. Turns out, you canʼt really find a stand for such a heavytelevision from places like IKEA anymore. They only make them for flatscreensthese days. Go figure.

So we turned to Craigslist. We looked and looked for days, and saw some we likedthat got sold before we could get to them. We saw several that were just ugly,but hey, such is the charm of Craigslist.

Rebecca assumed that plenty of people would be trying to sell old televisions(and TV stands) after Christmas to make room for the new televisions they got,and boy was she right. We finally found one we liked and snapped it up on NewYearʼs Day.