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Years ago, big-screen TV’s were about the size of a kitchen range and took up half a room.  I will never forget the time when my man first decided that we had to have one.

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My honey has a new toy. It’s the ultimate, all time, masculine, state-of-the-art dream machine – a big screen TV.

It started when the old TV began to fade and lose the color once in a while. There was really nothing wrong with it. All you needed to do was turn it off and back on and it worked as good as new. It probably had another year of two of life.

But pushing remote control buttons off and on was too much exercise for my honeyguy. Beside, it was an excuse for him to go to the electronics store and check out the new stuff.

I wouldn’t go with him. We didn’t need anything from the electronics store as far as I was concerned. We already have so many gadgets that we can’t figure out which remote control goes to what.

He came home with that I’ve-been-brainwashed-by-a-salesman look on his face. “How would you like to have a TV that hangs on the wall?”

“NO!” I screamed. I thought that was the end of it. I couldn’t understand why he blatantly insisted on going back to the electronic store again. Probably wants to give the salesman the bad news in person, I surmised.

Then “it” came. “It” was half as big as the house. “Good grief! That won’t even fit through the door!” Not to worry, the delivery guys have a shoehorn and Vaseline to squeeze it though the doorway, if needed.

As they wheeled it in, the floor buckled and furniture slid to the center of the room. I watched in a daze as the cat disappeared. Grabbing a toppling lamp and holding to the doorframe to avoid slipping into the void, I gasped, “My gosh! That’s the biggest TV I’ve ever seen!”

“But, you said that you didn’t want the kind that hangs on the wall. This is the other one.”

Male logic, I’ll never understand it.

“I don’t suppose you would consider returning it,” I asked. I need not have bothered asking.

Honey was in a man’s world. Testosterone had numbed his brain and he was too busy figuring out the buttons on the new remote control to even hear me. He muttered something about having given away the old one already. Men cover their bases, don’t they?

Besides having a screen big enough to make a stadium scoreboard jealous, “it” has speakers – lots of speakers, front speakers, rear speakers, rattle-the-windows speakers, shake-the-roof speakers, and vibrate-your-eardrums speakers.

“Where are you going to put all those speakers,” I foolishly asked.

“Oh, I’ll just hang them from the wall,” he said. Of course, silly me, just hang them from the wall. I envisioned all the ugly holes this was going make in my wall and shuttered.

“I think I have some old speakers up in the attic. Maybe I can hook them up too,” he speculated.

“Please, NO!” I threw myself in front of the attic door and threatened bodily harm if he even thought about going upstairs. Any more speakers and the house would explode.

We now have shelves behind “it” to hold all the mysterious black boxes that came with the package: tuner, speakers, subwoofer, DVD and tape players. We have wires running crisscross to speakers on the walls. I feel as if I have died and gone to e-hell.

Watching “it” is like setting on the front row at the movies. My eyes water as a bigger than life police car chases bigger than life bad guys across the screen. It’s a woman’s worst nightmare and a man’s biggest daydream all in one massive manifestation of media.

I watch the walls buckle and ride the shock waves, holding tightly to my sanity as the curtains shred and wallpaper peels.

“Can you turn off some of the speakers?” I scream.

“I’ll need to go to the electronics store first for more cable.”

“You’d better come back with a cable and nothing else,” I shout, as I envision him in a hypnotic trace, seduced by electronic gadgets that force themselves upon him with easy payment plans.

So, my honey owns a big screen TV – or “it” owns my honey. Wonder how long it will be before they come out with something bigger and better and “it” will become obsolete?

Not soon enough, I’m sure.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: I endured this big black monstrocity for eight long years until it finally succumbed to age and we purchased a flat-screen TV and hung it on the wall. Sympathy notes appreciated.

(c)2003