Pitter from Pat
Queen for a day!
Where is it decreed that men should have control of the remote?
Ah, yes! Its football season once again…which means I won’t get a chance at the TV remote until next spring…if I’m lucky. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I enjoy watching football and other sports too, but all in moderation.
However, my husband’s avid sport watching brings up another topic. Where is it decreed that men should have control of the remote? It isn’t written in scripture…it isn’t dictated by Emily Post…I can’t even find it searching Google! Yet, it seems to be a universal phenomenon because I hear it as a common complaint from most of my female friends. It certainly is the case in our home! Night after night, I sit through a constant flipping of TV channels…landing on something just long enough to peak my interest and then…blip…off it goes! Just when I am about to hear what mysterious illness has befallen Marley, the chimpanzee…the face of someone from the “Most Wanted” list appears. But, before I can find out if he or she is someone whom I should watch out for in my neighborhood…an announcer calls out the score of the Pacers and Lakers game! It drives me crazy!
But, you know…a funny thing happens with channel surfing when—on a rare occasion—I get control of the remote. I begin to hear heavy sighing coming from the other side of the room until the voice finally speaks. “Can you just land on something? Just when I begin reading the subtitles to see what is going on…you flip it off!”
Oh, my gosh! Is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black…or what!
A few times, I tried slipping the remote away when I caught him dozing…only to hear, “Hey, I was watching that.”
I’ve yet to figure out how a person can watch something while their eyes are closed!
Another time, when he was away on a fishing trip, I got to be “queen” of the remote”! I flipped to the home decorating channel, watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie—I still love the reruns—even viewed a twenty-minute infomercial on skin care! I felt like a kid left alone in a candy store…so many choices…so little time to choose. I even did the unthinkable…I turned off the TV and read a book!
Actually, the male’s compulsion to be “king” of the remote doesn’t make them bad guys…it’s just a trait they can’t help…sort of like our innate ability to sniff out a bargain or to drive directly to a yard sale at an address we didn’t know existed. They do good work around the house, put up with botched recipes, and are always willing to help a neighbor. If channel flipping is what they need to think they are in control…so be it. I’ll just be content with working a puzzle, biding my time, and waiting for the next fishing trip!
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Patricia Kirby, Editor
Patricia Kirby brings several years of journalism, editing, and publishing experience to Radius magazine. She is a published writer and former co-editor of Hoosier Outdoor magazine, with a distribution throughout the mid-west. Patricia is also a former Editor and Publisher of the Hoosier Topics newspaper, distributed countywide in Putnam County, Indiana, and the Springs Valley Herald, French Lick, Indiana. Her tell it like it is writing style offers humor and a bit of satire in her monthly columns, "Pitter from Pat." She has done extensive traveling, including a month in the Outback of Australia to accompany a study group of Aboriginal tribal music.
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