Remote Control

I can't stand that hillbilly shrink, Dr. Phil. Just the sound of his voice makes me want to puke.

Today Mark went on a drawer cleaning binge. It involved going through all the drawers and finding my 'fat' clothes, then separating them from my 'even fatter' clothes. The fat clothes would then be put into 'Space Bags' and stored away, while the even fatter clothes would be returned to my drawers for me to grow into. At some point during this process the television remote, that had been left on the bed, disappeared. It wasn't until I inquired as to why Dr. Phil was on the television, and not something more pleasant, like nails scratching on a blackboard, that Mark realized the remote was missing.

There are times that evoke terror, but none so horrible as losing the remote while Dr. Phil is on. After looking all around the bed, Mark figured that it had been packed up with my fat clothes, and so he pulled every vacuum packed bundle apart to no avail. Another possibility was that maybe I had scooped it up with the pile of socks with the limp elastic, and thrown it into the garbage. So there I was, like a homeless guy, swatting flies and digging through the garbage out back. It probably would have been better if I had put the old socks in a garbage bag, then I wouldn't have had to dig so deeply into the smelly trash. As it happened, there was no remote in the garbage either.

At this point you are probably asking, "Why don't you just reach over and turn the channel manually?", and the answer is that I am stubborn. I will not give in when I know that I can point the remote from across the room and silence Dr. Phil. I just need the damn remote, damn it. Luckily we have a large collection of remotes, so for thirty minutes I searched, swapping batteries, and entering codes until I finally found one that would work. I finally got to zap Dr. Phil, just as the closing credits were rolling.