This question is one that is asked almost daily in my household, and I am pretty sure it is the same case for your family. Everyone from my family sits down on the couch, ready to watch a movie on a Friday night, and suddenly, we are staring at a black screen. Slowly, we all realize the remote has gone missing. We all start getting up, lifting the pillows, and looking between the cushions, and the remote is still gone. Somehow, it has made its way across the room on a shelf. How is it possible that the TV remote appears to have grown legs and move about the room every time?
Back in the days of my childhood ignorance, I didn’t even know TVs had a remote to control the magical television with. I was too small to access this medium. As I grew, my understanding of the digital world expanded, and I was pulled into the long quest of always searching for the TV remote. At first, we only had one controller for the TV. It was the most generic black rectangle remote that everyone could imagine. This situation of looking for ONLY one remote lasted for some years. Then, my dad purchased the APPLE TV!! This tiny little box plugged into our TV screen and allowed us to access other forms of digital media. However, the upgrade had one problem. ANOTHER REMOTE!
And the Apple TV remote was even smaller, skinnier, and tinier than our normal TV remote. How on earth are we gonna find this thing? The search for the Apple TV control has begun. The struggle to find this slippery remote was even more challenging than ever before. Everyone was already seated on the couch, the TV on, playing some replay show on a random channel. The whole family starts yelling, accusing each other of losing the skinny remote.
Why is it that the remotes not only keep disappearing but are also multiplying?
Firstly, the controller moves around the place as everyone in the household watches TV at different times, maybe alone, maybe with friends, and you somehow forget where you put the remote later in the day when everyone needs it. Multiple people handling the one sacred thing is never a good choice but that is what makes the core memories that most people share.
Secondly, in my house, we did not have a fixed spot for the magic remote. Which is maybe the most plausible reason for the remote’s constant disappearance. If all of the participating members of your family decide to leave the remote on the coffee table, the remote should be there. But life is never that easy, is it?
All of this talk about the TV remote has me thinking about the good memories with my family. I would never exchange these amazing stories of the magical or skinny remote for anything else. This just shows how digital media ingrains itself into our everyday lives. Even if it’s such a simple thing as a TV remote.
Love this topic hahaha. This is such a relatable experience, when I was a kid my house had 2 remotes for the TV, but we were 7 living in one house… The battle was real. Especially between my siblings and I, the war between who got the remote and what we were going to watch based on that decision. I once cut my brother’s lip fighting for the remote… a rabid child I would say. At one point there was 2 TVs in the house, and now we had 4 remotes, that coincidentally worked for both TVs. There was not a single day where those remotes were in their designated spots… great memories!
Wow, this is a great way of looking at it!
The remote must have caused a lot of fights, but in the end it brought your family closer together. I on the other hand have a very different experience with our tv remote. Growing up I used to watch tv before school in the morning and the only issue my family had was that I was putting the sound to loud. Since highschool I do not watch much tv anymore. This is also the time I started being on social media, which very likely has something to do with my absence in front of the tv. However, through all of this the tv remote has always stayed on the coffee table in our household.
Interesting that this was such a big thing in yours! We learn something new everyday. 😀
Your blog brought me back so many memories!! I do feel like remotes were supposed to be a seamless piece of technology, just like wifi for example (you never notice you need it until it stops connecting) but somehow we always manage to lose it so we turn super aware of it haha. I also remembered that when I was a child and we lost the remote or it stopped working we simply used the buttons on the TVs, but looking at the one I own right now… it has no buttons! So if I lose my remote, what should my immediate reaction be?
I really liked how you turned something simple, like losing the TV remote, into a story about your family memories and how digital media sneaks into our daily life. The way you described the remote having growing legs and looks like multiplying felt really familiar, that was exactly what happened in my house as well. This made me realise that those moments of frustration while looking for the remote were actually part of the comfort and ritual of watching TV together.