My mother went out to get a TV, and had to go back to the store to take it back because the thing was broken. It's an ongoing joke in our family that Mom can pick out the broken appliance every time. Example: That time my microwave broke down, and the one she picked up at Wal-Mart tripped the breaker. So I had to wait until the next day to heat up my food!

And I seem to have inherrited her luck with appliances (well, sort of): my electronics are forever breaking down. I'll pay $40, then in a few months... it's not working. (Try today, for instance: The recorder just quits working. Tried three different plugs, same result. Machine was acting decades older than it was--and I have no way to explain the breakdown, since I *know* I didn't drop it, or mishandle it in any way.

Does anyone have a similar experience?

Not me personally, but my daughter seems to be the kiss of death to anything electronic. If it can mysteriously stop working when it becomes her property, it will! I sometimes wonder if she has a particular level of magnetism around her which might cause some of her problems?

The ongoing one is the microwave, which heats food just fine for everybody except her, she always needs to put her plate back in a second time to get it warm, even if it's the same food as everyone else and has been heated for the same length of time. Her mobile phone won't play music through her headset, her (two) ipods have just suddenly stopped working (no fall, shock, bump or anything of that sort to explain it away), the screen on her brand new camera only displays half the photo (the camera was a gift at Christmas and has been brought out for use about 4 times and carefully stored in the meantime) ... if I thought about it I could probably lenghten the list by a mile, it's really quite curious just how much stuff goes peculiar around her.

When I bought my flat screen TV, I had to wait for maintenance to mount it on the wall before I got Cable. When the building administrator came up and saw the TV, she was impressed by how it looked--until she heard who did the work. "It hasn't fallen down yet." (Really speaks to how the maintenance staff are regarded.) A year later, it's still hanging up