Controlling your world when all about you are non-functioning

For most of us, our coffee tables and end tables, the arms of our chairs, or the floor around and under most furniture is cluttered with not one, but several remote controls. Most of them are black, around six or seven inches long, and about as wide as the palm of a human hand. They fit comfortably in our hands so easily that we end up carrying them into another room, carrying them to the car with us, or maybe even dropping them in the garbage with that stack of mail from the afore mentioned chairs, tables, and floor.

I, personally, have six remotes on the coffee table in front of me. Two are television remotes, which we refer to as the “long” one and the “short” one. The long one will control the volume of the regular television but does absolutely nothing about changing channels or showing what you have recorded. The short one will control the regular television shows, the guide, the recordings, and the sound volume. It will not, however, start special streaming networks like Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos. Try as you may, these two are not interchangeable.

Neither the long one nor the short one will answer the phone, although they both look very much like the three remote handsets for my telephone land line... also on the coffee table. They especially look like them when they are turned face down, which is how we “hang up” the telephones and the remotes. Also, try as you may to change the channel from three to six, the kind people at AT&T will not change the channel.

Periodically, my television remotes decide they will not raise or lower the volume. The mute button also refuses to work, and the channel won’t change. It requires a special dance among the buttons and icons on the menus to get it running again. Of course, during that time the main character has been severely injured, the final Jeopardy question has been answered, and the recipient of the rose has been announced. It happens often enough that I’ve gotten the pattern down.

Then last week, nothing would work, except turning the television on to one channel at a very high volume. It wouldn’t adjust anything. For two days, I went through the process of trying to control the control. I used the long one which controls the “smart television” and the short one which controls something else. Nothing worked.

I am obsessive. Not a good thing when television viewing is a must. For several days and countless hours, I sat on the couch, the coffee table, and the floor behind the television trying to reset the television remotes. The long one would let me watch the streaming networks and adjust the volume for them, but not the short one. I “rebooted” so many times that the Justin Boot Company sent me a coupon.

Finally resorting to the internet, I Googled “what to do when the television remote won’t do anything.” It suggested all those things I had already done: around, under, up two rows, tap twice, turn around and get a bale of cotton. Nothing. Then I saw in small print at the bottom of the page, “Be sure you are using the correct remote. Press the button on the cable box under the television to ‘find the remote.’”

I pressed it, and miraculously, the remote in the bedroom started beeping. For two days I had been working with the remote from the bedroom… where the poor television had been going through its paces unrecognized and unappreciated.

When my father said, “Change the channel,” he didn’t have to worry which remote he was using. All of us jumped.