I could stop right here. You KNOW what I am going to say. But I cannot help myself. I am writing in self-defense while the channels are changing in the background. I gave up trying to watch anything. My husband is “surfing”.
I have a theory why they love that remote so much. And why they cannot watch just one channel.
Variety.
Now too much variety paralyzes me. If there are too many choices my eyes glaze over. I would be happy to just have 3 things in front of me. Which do you like best? That one. Good. Let's go home now. It’s easy when your options are narrowed.
But for men, having lots of choices is very exciting. It’s like being in a roomful of available women. It’s the choosing that’s fun. The possibility of having more than one perhaps? But the tension is, what if one of them slips away? What if she’s the BEST one in the room? So they have this built in instinct to check out the possibilities and make sure the best one doesn’t get away.
So there they are on the couch, at the end of a busy day with a wonderful little toy that just happens to plug right into their primal urge to “select”.
But before he can select, he must check out the available programs. Never mind that the cable service has this complex and very complete program guide that you can scan through right on the screen. Those are words. What he wants are images. And besides that, he doesn't want to take their word for it, he wants to see for himself.
Now the part that makes this little game even more interesting is that every half hour the possible choices CHANGE. This adds another layer of complexity to the festivities, that will become instantly apparent if you siddle up to him and try to slip the remote from his grip.
Now I will give my husband credit in that he does not actually GROWL at me. But the way he snatches back the remote leaves me in no doubt that I will be in BIG trouble should I try it again.
For some reason that old song, was it by Jim Croce?, comes to mind.
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.
You don’t spit into the wind.
You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger,
And you don’t touch a man’s remote.
So while I am writing this, he has been sitting over there on the couch, bink, bink, bink. The current favorite seems to be Apollo 13, but it could be dropped like a hot potato any second in favor of more desirable prey that is airing right now on another channel that must be checked right. . . about . . . .NOW. Yep, there goes Apollo 13, dumped like an old annoying girlfriend.
I have a little trick when the flipping reaches critical mass for me. I say, “Honey, want to watch a movie?” He is so stunned that I want to watch something on TV he immediately goes to the video collection and asks me what I want to see.
Great!
Then I get almost 2 hours of no flipping. It’s my only trick though. You could call me a one trick wife. But that might confuse other activities with the subject under discussion.
And I am NOT going THERE !