Changing Channels

I BOUGHT A television set about three and a half years ago. I was able to acquire it after filling up bunch of forms asking details about me and subjecting myself to a series of bespectacled humans asking questions about what I wrote in the forms and if I am fit to own the TV.

Excitement and elation best described what I felt the moment I got hold of the unit and the remote control, with batteries included. It was the first time that I had my personal wants granted. It was the start of my deeper desires' becoming when I can't even afford to buy myself a shirt before I got this tv.

The good thing about this television is that it captured immediately my attention and I never needed to change the channel at first. I was accustomed to watching the same show aired over the same station everyday. If it were a beer, I must have faltered to its pleasure and became addicted. I took the remote control away and placed it inside its box and hid it somewhere else.

Until such time when I noticed that my friends were having their own TVs and seemed happier with what they had. Consider a chocolate bar: I was only consuming a Safari chocolate while they're feasting on Macadamia's. I was becoming envious of their feat but something in me was solid enough to keep my feet on the ground.

I was contented. I still looked for my television and watch the same show. It has provided me pleasure and entertainment when everyone else was having much more bliss. I had to content on Eat Bulaga and laugh with their perennial jokes while their eyes were glued on cable and satellite broadcast watching live NBA or the Oscars.

Later on I found out, that my TV was beginning to sound boring and almost lifeless. Soon, it has started to crank a bit slower than usual. I spend a couple of minutes just to turn it on and a handful of seconds before images are shown.

That's when I started to hate my tv.

Everyday, same show and same actors were playing the same stupid scripts every now and then. As if they were a living testimony of how insulting my television was. It wasn't a HD tv, it was too small and too heavy to carry around the house. It was a burden that keeps on getting heavy by the tick of the clock.

So I decided to rid of it, no matter how and no matter what it cost. It took me more than a year to realize that this television is hard to let go as there are too many brand new TVs sprouting on the market but pays a high price to gain. I could lose my arm, my limb and my leg, before I could even lay my eyes on the smooth edges and fine buttons. It was a struggle similar to how squail would try on getting out of the basin before being cooked and served for lunch.

I was feeling hopeless. Day by day I ask myself, will I be fed with this same show for the rest of my life? With the same Tito, Vic and Joey doing their antics except for the fact that they are not the real Tito Vic and Joey but a pseudo representation of Erap, Saddam and Osama Bin Laden? I pray that one day God will move heaven and earth and save me from this inner demolition.

Then all of a sudden, a week before Christmas time of 2006, I stumbled upon a box that surprisingly appeared above my head. I was adamant in opening the laces that had covered this box but my curiosity is much powerful. I opened it deliberately and found inside, still inside its seal and left untouched, the remote control.

I thought I lost it and never even bothered to look for it. I was given one chance to switch my channel to a far greater station and I wasted no time in pressing the keys.