Johnny the Cable Maintenance Guy

To this point in my life, as mentioned before, I have yet to lay claim to the title of most technology-savvy human, and doubtfully this will ever occur at any point in the future. For this reason, I was totally fine with waiting for the cable company to send out a guy to set up internet in our apartment, which was fantastic for two reasons: 1) the internet is actually working and 2) I would have otherwise never had the opportunity to meet Johnny the cable maintenance man, who in my opinion, could be the single most bizarre person I’ve ever met.

When Johnny came rocking up on the scene Saturday morning, the first thing I noticed is that he’s wearing a utility belt that puts Batman’s to utter shame. Johnny was maybe 5’3’’ tops, so that in itself further accentuated the fact that this utility belt was massive and could have contained anything from several sewing machines to a small child. I was at first unsure whether he was setting up internet or summiting K2, but after he proudly flashed his badge 3-4 times in the first 10 seconds, I let him in.

Immediately after entering, he ditched the utility belt and let it crash to the floor, lightly registering on the Richter scale (starring Charlton Heston. You know it’s gonna be great). Standing in the main room, he took a long hard look at our TV, then proceeded to ask us how many TVs we had in the apartment.

“One, just this one,” was the answer.

“Ok so no other televisions are around?”

“Uh nope, this is it.”

“Ok…so it looks like you’ve got a box here. Is that supposed to be for another TV that you have set up in the apartment?”

“No man, this is the TV. The one. The only. Of all the TVs that ever were made in this world, we have one, and here it is.”

I don’t know that we ever fully convinced him that we weren’t secretly hiding more TVs in this apartment, and why that made a difference, I don’t have the slightest clue, like if we had two TVs hooked up, he’s gonna have to drill for oil or create a small hydroelectric plant downstairs to power this.

Johnny’s next step was to find every opportunity to let us know that this setup process was “so easy a fifth-grader could do it”. Why fifth grade? Because you apparently have to know your states and caps first before installing internet connections. I wasn’t about to try it on my own – I mean, like I've said before, I know the basics essentials about computers: email, the internet, Paint, etc., but I figured rather than me somehow mistakenly wiring my router to the shower head, I’d have someone else just do it. Ironically, after announcing multiple times this was easy enough for fifth-graders, Johnny spent the next fifteen minutes on the phone troubleshooting some issue since we weren’t getting a signal. I held back on several sarcastic comments aimed at Johnny.

Johnny definitely had a thing for our TV, since he then wanted to talk to me about all the cable channels we could be getting. Pulling out the list of channels from his Mary Poppins utility belt, he explained to me that the channels in the 400’s were HD, and then had the heart to break the news to me that our current TV was in fact, not HD, and mentioned several times that we would need an HD TV if we wanted to pick up those channels.

And to think…ALL THIS TIME I was under the assumption we were watching high definition television on our 25’ Sharp TV, bulging square screen and all. It wasn’t until Johnny taught us about what an HD television was that I realized that just because HD exists doesn’t mean you’re getting it automatically streamed to your (one, I promise) TV that was made a good decade before HD was ever an option. Johnny truly was a well of knowledge that we just couldn’t get enough of.

After a while, we got it up and running, all thanks to Johnny. It made me realize, that if more people were like Johnny, this world would definitely be much more informed on the intricacies of HD, and we’d definitely have a better census count on how many TVs are actually out there in our homes. So here’s to you Johnny, Mr. Ridiculously Over-Eager Cable Guy.