I know now that I'm not the only one. In fact, I have proof. My friend Kathy of The Junk Drawer wrote recently she plans to say "Sayonara" to her uber-surround-sound-indoor-personal-home-multiplex the moment her husband, Dave, snuffs it. Such is her increasing animosity to the beast.
(The multiplex, I mean. Not Dave. She likes Dave.)
My own relationship with my home entertainment system is thus:
Getting the bare minimum hooked up and working properly in the first place has been a Light-Beaming-From-the-Heavens-Chorus-of-Fat-Kids-With-Wings-and-Harps-Flapping-Around Miracle. One not to be screwed with.
Adding or enhancing this system is absolutely out of the question.
Yes, I admit it. I am perfectly content having reached a state of Technical Meh.
I have worked it out so I know where the cables go for the current items I own. No more, no less. This alone had been finalized through lengthy consultation with a friend, a dad, a Radio Shack employee and pinpointed through a series of pencil drawings and weeping phone calls.
When I have moved domiciles, or exchanged dead home entertainment technologies for happy live ones, the cables are all marked with careful, specifically-coded systems so detailed and mysterious, Tom Hanks and Dan Brown are doing a book-to-feature movie about them.
This system gets threatened about once every three years, as my dad comes to visit for Christmas.
He sees that I have three remotes. One for the TV. One for the cable. And one for the video player. And he feels that in his deep and abiding Dad Knowledge, he can streamline this for me into a single Omniscient Remote.
But while that idea is a lovely fairy tale we might enjoy pondering in dappled garden glens, I do not, in fact, want One Remote to Rule Them All.
I like my Triumvirate of small black buttoned boxes. What the Pop learns after a few hours of research on the matter is that my technolgy currently teeters on the precipice of Ultimate Doom.
One subtle change could render the entire system into electronic paper weights.
These days, when the spirit moves him to reach for remotes with renewed vigor at the challenge, I slap his hand and tuck a mug of egg nog in it.
But that's family for ya, isn't it? Always trying to push your buttons.
