Television

Every Wednesday evening, 6-7, I had a phonetics class with other Americans from our program. The class was in centre ville, so we had a 25 minute walk back to Cuques, our dorm.
Wednesday also happens to be garbage night in centre ville.

One evening, as we were walking back from class, we found a television on the side of the road by the trash. It had about a 25 in screen, and there appeared to be nothing wrong with it. So we decided, what the heck, lets pick it up and carry it the 2.5 miles home and see if it works.

I was with Frank, who is about 6ft4, and several girls who are closer to my height. It took 2 girls on one side, and Frank just about bent double on the other, to carry this thing. We managed for a few blocks, but it was bulky and there was just too much of a height difference. So we decided to try taking it on the small public Cuques bus.
The bus pulled up, and we loaded this thing onto it. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure any of us paid the bus fair. We made for quite a sight- all obviously foreign and toting a large television. The TV didn't fit past the front aisle section, so we left it on the ground there, creating a bottleneck. People had to climb over it in order to get off the bus. It was also blocking people from going down the aisle to the seats in the back, so pretty soon the front end of the bus got crowded. We rode in awkward silence... just standing around staring at this television, when finally another passenger asked "est-ce qu'il marche?"..."does it work?"
"on ne sais pas" -we have no idea
We started laughing.
When we got to our stop, we lifted the TV up and slowly hoisted it off of the bus (a bunch of people had to get off then get back on before we could get it down the stairs...)
We then balanced the TV on top of a rolling trashcan, and rolled it from the bus stop to the front of the dorm.
Then we had to carry it up 4 flights of stairs. I took turns rotating with the three other girls, going up backwards, while frank pushed from beneath. We had to stop and rest on each landing. There was lots of swearing, sweating, and grunting, and we almost dropped the damn thing about a dozen times.
we finally got it to Franks floor (only then did someone come out and offer to help us), and into his room.
The next day he hooked it up, went to FNAC and bought a cable, and sure enough- it worked! We celebrated by gathering to watch a soccer game. The color was off, so the turf looked orange, but we got a decent selection of channels. SCORE!