Ina Chadwick and her husband click … and click, and click, and click, as his obsession with tech has taken control of their home.
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We are trying, now, to become whole again in our household. Mechanically whole. The last time we were whole was in 1988, when TV remote controls required batteries, before Bluetooth, before touch pads, before Apple TV.
I didn’t even know what items in our house ran on batteries until my husband was hospitalized for two weeks in the year of our Lord 1988. Every day, I’d come home from visiting him, exhausted. I relied on network television for comfort as if I were sucking my thumb.
The last time we were whole was in 1988, when TV remote controls required batteries, before Bluetooth, before touch pads, before Apple TV.
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In the morning, I’d drag myself out of bed, get ready for work, and as I have always done since I was a teenager, weigh myself by gingerly stepping on the scale after removing even my rings. I feared weight gain, and if I felt fat, I’d wait another day, and maybe another, until I felt I could handle what the scale said without getting so disheartened that only a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise with a teaspoon of oily tuna could console me.
The hospital cafeteria and coffee shop, where I took breaks from soothing my husband both before and after a painful spine surgery, presented salivating challenges that no one could surmount. Deep fried fish in batter that you only find in alluring dives, french fries swept into a cardboard boat that made you feel as if the antiseptic smells around you were really boardwalk odors. Grilled cheese, bacon, and canned cherry pie à la mode. I indulged.
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On the seventh day of his hospitalization, I weighed myself carefully. The scale offered no readout. There was nothing but zeroes in all three slots. I moved it around. Nothing. Broken, I said to myself. I didn’t tell my husband. He always thought I was nuts for weighing myself daily. On Demerol he wouldn’t have cared at all.
For two days I also sat in our dark TV room, because the intricate set of switches he designed for turning on anything had a master switch that I couldn’t find.
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For two days I also sat in our dark TV room, because the intricate set of switches he designed for turning on anything had a master switch that I couldn’t find. On the eleventh day, the TV remote stopped working. My home life was getting dimmer and dimmer. I sat in various rooms, ones where bulbs hadn’t blown out. I read in an upright Pilgrimesque chair in the dining room, where two high-hat recessed bulbs were blown, but there was still a working lamp.
On exactly the same day, both the old Sony TV remote and the cordless phone died. Turned out the phone charger and the bottom of the phone were not making contact. I’ve since learned the remedy for that—rubber erasers.
That was it! I got up from a seated position and used an on/off button on the TV. It actually had those words instead of the now ubiquitous red open circle with a vertical line. I went to a department store (they still had those, too) and bought a scale with a real needle in the dial. I thought of the rusted Detecto that one of my doctors uses that measures your height too. We all like that dial and the fact that the springs respond to a gentle step by rewarding you with a lower weight. It seems only fair if you take your time.
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Over the past 25 years our home remote control system for working anything, including the air conditioner, has become obscene. There is the LG, there is the Mitsubishi, there is the other thing that controls the Blu-Ray, and then there was the stereo tuner control that had so many lines of instructions even my young grandchildren who could program a space ship wouldn’t try. They just yelled out “help!”
Finally, we would have one remote for everything! This remote did, however, come with a ten thousand pound box (that cost nearly as many dollars) called an Arcan …
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Recently my husband began a conversation in the car. I could tell where he was going. I had so objected to the million dollar BSR 10 Universal remote for the B & K tuner he purchased 10 years ago (which still required several satellite remotes around its “Universe”), that he was now telling me he was going to make me happy. Finally, we would have one remote for everything! This remote did, however, come with a ten thousand pound box (that cost nearly as many dollars) called an Arcan that needed two boys to hoist it into place on the shelf below the TV, the Apple airport, the Apple TV, and the cable box, He promised to sell the B & K on eBay.
The Arcan’s clickie is quite sleek and fits into a base the way a phone sits in its charger. I have already tried to answer the remote when the phone rings.
Every morning for 10 days I found my husband with the new remote in hand, “programming it,” and finally “getting the pause button working.” I must admit I enjoyed turning on every media device in the house with one click of this sleek new toy. I dropped out of my clickie support group and began to feel free to watch TV. I even learned all the input options for music and film and figured out I could see my laptop screen at 52 inches wide. Whoa!
But my joy was short-lived. Christmas Day brought a revolt, followed by a nervous breakdown. The new remote wouldn’t play the sound into our state-of-the-art speakers—only into a headset. Manufacturers guarantee this très cher item, so all 5 tons are going back in the box after we hire two Sumo wrestlers to pack it up and pay the shipping as if it’s an armoire.
Rabbit ears are looking better and better on the vintage bakelite TV we bought a few years ago and got working just for fun.
Originally published on MouseMuse.com.
Top photo—Dan Zen/Flickr
Bottom photo courtesy of author