Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Case of the Decoy Remote

I hold baby Mikey sometimes while watching television. We watch stuff like "A Baby Story" or "The Office" together. My rascally little kid does his best to make this an interactive experience. He is absolutely obsessed with the remote control. If he so much as glimpses it, he will lunge, wiggle, and struggle until he has the prize in his little hands.

At this point all heck breaks loose. He starts squeezing buttons. The picture in picture window pops up. Then it gets larger and moves to a different corner as his little fingers hit still more random buttons. Strange and obscure menus suddenly open up, giving heretofore unknown tantalizing glimpses into features and functions of my cable box. Just as quickly, they disappear. Mikey continues grasping.

The channel changes then changes again. The display fills up with sevens, and the television jumps to a blank channel. Then, the remote goes right into his little teething mouth. His proto-teeth make little plasticky crunching noises as he chews away. A fine layer of baby slobber now coats the remote. The remote finally comes out of his mouth. With a big smile on his face, Mikey gives the remote a few languid shakes, then proceeds to drop it straight onto the hardwood floor. The back pops off, and the batteries roll out and away, never to be found.

This is clearly no way to watch television. Enter the decoy remote. Mikey gets an old remote without batteries to assault, and I get to keep watching Baby Story.

2 comments:

shannon said...

What a vivid picture you paint. The only thing I must correct, is that I don't think we own a back to any of our remotes anymore. There was no falling off involved, I'm not sure if it ever exsisted in the first place!

Sarah said...

That is SO FUNNY!!! (Scrubs reference for Shannon)
We have a decoy remote too! Austin will FIXATE on ANY remote...so we finally gave him one of his own.