The Absent Remote Control

One day last week, I was sitting happily in my chair watching TV and knitting when Ron walked in with the mail.  The mail went on my lap on top of the remote control for the TV.  That was the last time I saw the remote for about 4 days.  I know for a fact I didn't jump up since I don't do much jumping up these days, but somehow the remote had vanished.  

Did one of the dogs grab it?  Gus has previously pulled it off the table and added some teeth marks to the general dirt and grime that covered it.  Or had it gone into the trash with all the unwanted and unread catalogs?  That seemed the most likely scenario.  We pulled out all the wastebaskets and the kitchen garbage and went through them all piece by piece.  Fortunately, it wasn't nearly as yucky as it could have been.  But no remote.

We checked under the tables, behind every piece of furniture and in every drawer.  It had somehow vanished into the great unknown.  Well, rats.

I guess people lose remotes regularly enough that many places carry them.  You can get a DirecTV remote at Walmart or Target or order them from Amazon.  That's what Ron did - he ordered a couple of them from Amazon.  In the meantime, we have two other remotes for two other TV's so we tried to reprogram one of those.

Over the next three days, Ron and my brother, Craig, tried everything they could think of to make one of our remotes work for the big TV in the living room.  Then the new remotes arrived and they worked just as hard to try to program the new ones.  Nothing worked.  Every button on the TV and on the DirecTV receiver was pushed or proded to no avail.

It was obviously my turn to try.  Now that AT&T has bought out DirecTV, it isn't as easy as it used to be to find a phone number to call for technical support but I managed it.  Did I have the four digit pass code?  No.  We don't have one.  Mr. Nelson needs to call back and create one.  Seriously?  At this point I was not quite spitting nickels but it was really close.  When Ron got back from his walk, we called.  He set up the pass code and now I could do what I need to do.  After 48 minutes on the phone with tech support, we managed to push the right button in exactly the right way and the TV was functioning again.  Three cheers for us!

Within 10 minutes of having a fully functioning TV, I found the old remote.  It was in the drawer next to my chair.  A drawer that all of us had looked in at least a dozen times.  Here is what it looked like.  Can you see the remote?

Nope.  Neither did we.  Here is what it looks like when I move one small piece of paper.

Yup.  There it is.  We took the grimy dog chewed remote and threw it in the trash.  Now we have a bright new clean and sparkly remote that works just like the old one did.  And we have a new extra remote for when we lose the next one.

I'm exhausted.