Mike Pound: Pick a remote, bang it on your hand

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February 22, 2008

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Fri Feb 22, 2008, 03:45 PM CST

I tried to turn the up the volume on one of our TVs the other day and instead I either opened our garage door or launched a nuclear missile.

We have a lot of remotes in our house. Some of those remotes are from TVs that we used to own but have long since died. Some of the remotes are from CD players that we used to own but also have long since died.

By the way, for some reason, my wife and I have had bad luck with CD players. Normally what happens when we buy a CD player is that it will work for a few months and then it will stop working. We don’t know why that is, but it is. Right now we have four CD players in our house and only one of them works. But that’s OK because, as I understand it, CD players are the equivalent today of telegraph machines. Nobody, as I understand it, uses CD players today. Now everyone listens to iPods or MP3 players.

My wife and our 10-year-old daughter, Emma, have MP3 players and a few months ago they bought me one. The MP3 player my wife and Emma gave me already had songs on it, although I don’t have any idea the songs got there. My wife told me that she “downloaded” the songs onto my MP3 player for me, but I think she’s just making that up.

I have to admit, though, that I liked my MP3 player. Well, I liked it until the battery wore down. My wife tells me that to charge the battery on my MP3 player all I need to do is plug it into our computer for a while, but I’m uneasy with that. Instead, I just put my MP3 player in the glove compartment of my car and went back to listening to NPR on my car radio. Although, as I understand it, nobody listens to regular radio stations in their car anymore. Today everyone listens to something called “satellite” radio which I thought was sort of dumb, until I discovered that there is a “satellite” radio station dedicated exclusively to Jimmy Buffett. I decided that maybe “satellite” radio isn’t so dumb after all.

But I digress.

The problem with having as many remotes as we do is I have a hard time figuring out which remote I need to use whenever I want to do something as simple as turn up the volume on my TV. Now I’m sure people are wondering why, instead of searching through 20 or 30 remotes, I don’t just get up, walk over to the TV and turn the volume up by hand? Well, I have only one thing to say to those people.

PLEASE.

Even when I do manage to locate the right remote, it’s likely the remote won’t work. I don’t know about how things work in your house, but in our house we watch a lot of TV, which means we use our TV remotes a lot, which means we occasionally drop our TV remotes. And when I use the word “occasionally,” I mean it in the sense that Barack Obama “occasionally” uses the word “change.”

We drop our TV remotes a lot, is what I’m saying.

After we drop a TV remote enough times, it will eventually break apart, and I will have to fix the remote. I fix the remote by wrapping it in more tape than they used to wrap King Tut. This works — for a while. Then it doesn’t.

What happens to the mummy-wrapped remote is the batteries lose their connection to whatever it is they connect to that turns up the volume on the TV. So I have to fix the remote, again. I fix the remote again by banging it against my hand until the batteries connect with whatever it is they are supposed to connect with. This also works for a while. Then it doesn’t.

We currently are using a TV remote, that I have to bang against my hand, in our bar in the basement. I like to watch TV in our bar in the basement mainly because there is beer in our bar in the basement and because nobody else in our house likes to watch TV in our basement. What I don’t like is having to bang the TV remote against my hand in order to turn up the volume. But I do it.

Why? Because I’m a guy.

I would rather sit in a chair in front of a TV and bang a tightly wrapped remote against my hand in an effort to turn the volume up instead of getting out of the chair, walking 2.5 feet and turning the volume up by hand. I do it because that’s what guys do.

And then, when I get the remote to work, I get up, go outside and close our garage door.

Address correspondence to Mike Pound, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802, or via e-mail at mpound@joplinglobe.com.

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Mike Pound: Pick a remote, bang it on your hand

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