Random good deeds

I just had this weird thing happen. I buy prepared food at this place called The Coopermarket near my house. Next door is this little boutique that I've never seen anyone go in and out of except for the owner. They'd been closed to a while for renovations, but apparently reopened recently.

I was walking out of Coopermarket and past the boutique and I hear a pounding on the window. I look over and some woman is motioning me inside. I go to the door and she asks me if I could help her. She tells me I look like someone who is good with mechanical things. This isn't really true. I'm mediocre with mechanical things, though I can usually manage in a pinch.

In any event, she shows me this little TV set with a built-in VHS player, with a little beige box attached to a rabbit-ear antenna with a wire on one side and the TV on the other. She says she can't get the TV to get any kind of picture. She keeps pushing buttons on the little beige box, which is branded something like Zimcor. That thing is supposed to give her a picture but it didn't appear to be doing anything. So I played around with it a little and she starts telling me about how it used to work. "You'd just push the buttons and it would change channels. The TV stayed on 3 or 4, but now I can't get it to go to 4, and all I can get is channel 29, which is in Spanish (emphasis hers)"

This was not useful information, so I stopped her for a second and said "I worked in cable TV for 20 years and I've never seen anything like this Zimcor thing." She says, "You don't know what it is?" And I reply, "Ma'am, you don't even know what this is and it's your thing. Nobody knows what one of these is."

But I decided to look at the back, because that's what us repair types do (and I really did used to do this kind of thing as a job), and I noticed a DC input. So I tell her it looks like it ought to be plugged in. This seems vaguely familiar so she hands me a basket full of obsolete electronics and cords. I root around until I find a promising-looking cord, plug it into the back of the Zimcor, and incredibly, the TV picture pops on. I tried not to look too surprised and she looked absolutely thrilled. I think she was happy with getting the TV to work, but I think what gave her the most pleasure was her wisdom in choosing me of all people to come in and help.