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.
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