Remote Controlled
(ATTN: If you’ve NEVER thought to yourself, “Mother of God, I must be getting old”, then ditch this post, slip into your stilettos and go find a booze can somewhere. You just won’t get it.)
There’s no specific age or any singular event that starts the wheelchair rolling on those pesky senior’s moments. You’re not necessarily old at the sight of your first grey hair (of the non-ear variety anyway), or your sudden inability to read stop signs without squinting, or your not being able to recognize anyone under thirty on the cover of People Magazine anymore. It’s when you no longer care that you can’t. That’s the age of wisdom.
I remember being smugly amused by my mother’s inability to program her VCR (for you twenty-somethings, that was PVR’s grandmother), and could never have imagined being beaten by household technology. But last Tuesday I had a dignity-draining oldster moment in front of my own kids during a rare Must-See-TV frenzy I was in over the finale of So You Think You Can Dance.
Like any reasonable grownup, I don’t ask for much from my cable provider, just a clear signal, a realistic bill and a converter that doesn’t resemble the flight deck at NASA. But at 7:59pm as I eagerly turned on the TV and then the PVR (or was it the PVR first, and then the TV?), the screen showed a list of prompts I didn’t understand. As the clock display rolled over to 8:00pm, I grabbed the remote and frantically pressed channel 8, but that simply caused an ‘Error HD’ prompt I’d never seen before. I could hear voices (like there were real people in there!) but every time I pressed a button, the channel kept changing. When I did nothing, the channel kept changing. Even when I swore at it, the channel kept changing.
That’s when kids can be so helpful.
“Let me do it Mum!”
“No, I’LL do it!”
“I’LL DO IT!”
“GIVE ME THAT REMOTE!”
“I HAD IT FIRST!”
“And the winner of So You Think You Can Dance 2012 iiiis …
From now on, I’m leaving the tv set to the weather channel. I hear it’s pretty entertaining.
That’s so funny!! Recently a lady asked me to come over to help her get her DVD player working again. I had my kids with me. She handed me a remote and I looked at it like the buttons had Chinese characters on them. My ten year old son promptly took it from me and before I even knew what happened he already fixed the problem. I am totally feeling this post. Wait, am I allowed to talk like that anymore? 🙂
Oh, you are SO allowed to talk like that on my blog … thanks Shelly!
Great story. The young may be irritating at times, but they know their technology.
Yes, sadly I’ve been out-teched by my 11 year old son for a long time now. 🙁 But thanks for stopping by Larry! 🙂
I get so irritated when I can’t figure something out, and when my children want to show me! I always have to elbow them away and tell them I’m older so I can figure it out. I usually have to pull one of them aside and have them show me later! 🙂
There should be support groups for people like us. Thanks Tia!
This happens to me all the time. I just turn off the remote and turn it back on. Sometimes it’s fixed. If not, I just pretend that I didn’t really want to watch TV anyway!
Good idea. Either that or chuck it out the nearest window? Thanks Anne-Marie!
lmao… i’ve always found that smashing the remote with a hammer, while producing a different set of results than originally intended, is wholly satisfying – especially followed by a ‘refreshment’ on the rocks…
In my house, we call that Arts n’ Crafts (followed, of course, by a refreshment on the rocks …)
Perfect.
Funny and well told! I like the term “oldster” and officially ask permission to use it freely…(that means no royalties!) Keep this going…
Scoop
Permission royally granted. 🙂
Ah Andie, not only can I not use the remote, but when I dropped it on the floor (accidentally I assure you) I bent down to pick it up and I realised I was bending down in a squat LIKE MY MOTHER! Double whammy – I am an old bird.
Good stuff! My story is worse. Babysitting my 5 yr old granddaughter and she wants to watch something on the tv in her room. I grab the remote and start pushing buttons. Nothing good happens with that. Alyssa says, “Nanny let me do it”. Grabs the remote, pushes the right buttons and kabam, her show comes on. I am not old, just not a remote techie. Thanks for visiting my blog, will follow yours.
Reblogged this on Home Grown News Media and commented:
There are times I can relate to this. Please let me know what you think. Andrew