The mysterious channel 771

Recently my grandparents asked me to call their cable provider to see if there was any way to lower their monthly bill. Like all grandparents, (unless you live in the back woods of Mississippi or Nebraska or something and become a grandma at 30, because you yourself had a kid at 15...) all grandparents are senior citizens. And if you're also like most grandparents (again, unless you're grand kids are P-diddy or Beyonce..) you probably live on a very fixed income. Therefore, my grandparents are always trying to find ways to save money. Since they're senior citizens though, they get a lot of discounts and can eat at Hometown Buffet for like 5 bucks. So it's not as bad as it sounds. Anyway, once in a while they ask me to call various companies that they are patrons of to ask if there are any discounts or new options to save money. They also tell me to threaten the companies by telling them my grandparents plan to "cancel" the service if they don't get a discount.

My grandparents are so cute...

My grandparents are the two old people in the middle. Obviously. The other two are one set of my aunt/uncles.

Anyway, they kept telling me to make sure not to cancel channel "771" because it's "grandpa's channel". Now, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but my grandfather is legally deaf and blind. He can only see blurred outlines of people and things. If I pretended to be the local weather girl or dressed up like a firefighter, he wouldn't know the difference. So I wasn't really sure what this mysterious channel 771 that was only for my grandpa was and when I asked my grandma what it was she just said "it's something your grandpa watches..."

hmmm....suspicious. Did I really want to know? If I dug deeper and tried to uncover the mystery of channel 771 would it be like Pandora's box...or is it pandora's bracelet..............those things are so ugly...the bracelet, not the box..i don't know what the box looks like..never mind I'm rambling...

AND WE'RE BACK!

So I called the cable provider and after yelling..I mean clearly and patiently speaking "representative" a gazillion times into the phone I FINALLY got to speak to a "representative" of India...oops..I mean representative of Time Warner. Here is how the convo went. (By the way I will always and forever put "representative" in quotes, because I do not believe that any "representative" that I talk to over the phone for any company is really "representing" anything true, real or knowledgeable about anything.)

"Representative": Well, ok Mrs. Little asian girl (ok, so he didn't call me that, but he did call me a mrs..so it's my "representation" of the truth. If you would like further information please say "representative" now.) Well, ok Mrs. Little asian girl, it seems that your grandparents currently have three different packages on their cable account. The variety package for 8.99 a month, the Korean channel package for 14.99 a month and the Playboy channel package for another 14.99 a month.

Little Asian Girl: "WHAT??!!! PLAYBOY PACKAGE??!!! OH NO NO, THEY DON'T NEED THAT. CANCEL IT. THEY'RE SENIOR CITIZENS. THEY DON'T NEED THAT CANCEL.. YUP. YEAH. YES. CANCEL. by the way....is the playboy channel, channel 771?"

"Representative": Umm..no maam, I don't see that we even carry channel 771.

Little Asian Girl: "Oh, ok, sorry. thank you."

So after that mildly traumatic incident, I told my grandmother that I had saved her a few bucks by cancelling a package that they didn't need. When she asked me what it was that I cancelled I (embarrassingly) said

"Porno grandma. Porno."

Now, I thought my grandmother would sort of be embarrassed too, but I guess I should have known better. She is the same women after all that told me my husband wouldn't like my tata's because they were too small. (You can read about that here.) Anyways, she just continued to cut up fruit and went about her business totally un-phased by what I had just told her.

Disturbing.

So at the end of the day I saved two old folks a bit of cash, earned another notch as THE BEST GRANDDAUGHTER IN THE WORLD, but never did solve the mystery of channel 771. I'll have to ask my grandpa one day if he still is able to watch channel 771 and depending on the answer, I'll either write another blog post about it because it's so hilarious or see a therapist because it's too..well..gross..

haha~

-little asian girl