Does it have a remote?
Okay, tell me, how many times during a night, do you lose the remote?
You’ve settled in bed, got your pillows in the right spot, your head is comfortable, your neck is supported, the covers are pulled around you, and then you reach for the remote. No luck finding it. You grope, you pat the covers, you lift them up to look under. Nope.
It’s only when you (or I) get up to go to the bathroom that it drops out of the void and onto the floor.
And then, once done in the bathroom, the cycle starts again. The pillows are fluffed, the covers are tucked around and you’re ready to start your favorite program and again the damn remote is nowhere to be found.
Maybe I could put a rubber band around it and wear it on my wrist like a prom corsage.
My friend says she puts the remote in between her and her husband but when one of them tosses the covers the remote goes flying.
Many times I’m sitting on the remote. Can’t get much more remote than that.
I’ve researched bedside caddies but am not sold on the idea that the remote would actually be put into it. Maybe a gps would be better but I wonder if the gps would find it any faster than my groping would.
I have hooks on the side of my bedside table; one for my cheater eye glasses, one for the cord of my phone charger and a third for a back scratcher. Maybe I could rearrange those and put Velcro on the remote and on the bedside table. Velcro the damn thing.
Personally I like the prom corsage idea the best.
I’ve read that watching TV before bed causes insomnia. Well, fire truck sirens cause stress, which causes insomnia and we’ve had a lot of fire truck action lately. So when I can’t sleep, I watch Netflix.
They say that the older a person gets, the less sleep they need. I think it’s the less sleep they get. Problems: aging, medications, pain, restless leg syndrome, heart issues, lack of physical activity…the list goes on. Not that I have any of those problems – I just like watching streaming series. Ones that go on episode after episode. One time I stayed awake all night watching a series from beginning to end. It was so exciting but I can’t recall what it was for the life of me!
I think the energy one expends looking for the TV remote is the cause of insomnia. Mark my words, researchers are probably spending millions trying to prove that theory. They could save the money and do research on TVs that read peoples’ minds. Forget remotes.
I remember the first remote my parents had. It was for a Zenith black and white TV. We watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and I made my opera-loving mom promise not to change channels during the middle of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
That remote was never misplaced as it was always on my mom’s side of the couch, on the table next to her cigarettes.
My bestie Mabel and her husband Bart don’t have a TV in their bedroom. Bart says it causes insomnia (he’s right), yet Mabel takes her iPad to bed and streams Outlander, Call the Midwife, Anne with an E and falls asleep that way.
They’ve consistently had three remotes; one for an On/Off switch for the TV, one for their DVD player, and their most important one – an On/Off switch for the internet. The combination of all three switches turns off all their HEV lights; the blue light emitted from home electronic devices.
Some say (Bart and Mabel adhere to this belief) that too much HEV light can negatively affect your eyes and overall health. This is because the human eye can’t filter blue light as well as other colors, so more of it passes through to the retina. Some potential negative effects include eye strain, eye fatigue, ocular migraines, and disrupted sleep cycles.
Hence Bart and Mabel have three remotes that they used to Velcro to a board and keep on the couch when their children were young. Now, with grandkids, they just put the remotes someplace high. Except they’re having problems remembering where that high place is (would getting high help them remember?).
So, what’s a girl to do?…I think I’ll go with Bart and Mabel’s use of Velcro, except I’ll Velcro my remote to my bedside table. Let’s see how long that lasts.
Lucy Llewellyn Byard welcomes comments and shares. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
