ARCHIVE

  • Last modified 5623 days ago (Nov. 5, 2008)

MORE

COLUMNS:   Another Day in the Country

Another Day in the Country ®

We used to chuckle at my uncle and aunt as they watched TV and how they handled the remote control — which we dubbed “The Clicker.”

Having been married for 50 years, they still had different tastes when it came to what they liked to watch on television. Uncle Hank tended to like westerns — shoot-em-ups — while Aunt Gertie enjoyed more educational shows. If the show got too violent, our aunt would grab the clicker and John Wayne would be gone, mid-sentence.

Auntie Gertie once said that her idea of a perfect life would be to have a lovely new RV (so she could travel just anywhere she wished in comfort), the Schwan’s man as her driver (he was a charming fellow who obviously could handle the vehicle — and perhaps came with treats), and then she wanted her own clicker! That would be perfection.

There was a clicker war last night at my house. While my sister doesn’t have TV at her house and comes to watch mine on occasion, she only comes for specific programs which the two of us can agree. When Tooltime Tim enters the mix, he’s pretty quiet as we (then the political majority) control the clicker, flickering and commenting on what we see.

However, when it’s just Triple T and me, it’s a draw, and we almost had a clicker war last night. Tim tends to be an omnivorous television watcher — as long as it moves, he’ll watch. While I, on the other hand, am a picky eater. Ninety-five percent of what I see on the channels is trash, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a perfect setup for a dispute in the white house.

Commercials, which seem to make up about 35 percent of air time, are especially distasteful to me. For this reason, I love public television and the digital recorder that makes it possible for me to watch programs at my leisure and speed through commercials. That little flip forward button is one of the nicest things invented, as far as I’m concerned.

Now Tim doesn’t like flip forward. It’s his firm belief that I miss important things — like the beginning of sentences or sometimes, whole thoughts. Instead, according to him, I should use a different button on the clicker to move through things quickly. I disagree. With his button of preference, I still have to watch those commercial, albeit on mute.

“What’s wrong with commercials?” Tooltime Tim wants to know. “You might learn something.” Ah, there are grounds, if I ever heard any, for an all out Clicker War.

You can understand how tricky it is for whole cultures to get along if two people have disputes over the clicker. There’s a clicker war going on, big time, in Afghanistan and the Middle East. It’s a clicker war between the Democrats and Republicans and the closer we get to election day the more fiercer the battles raged. It’s all about who holds the clicker, who’s got their hand on the button, who chooses the programs we watch, and who is in control of the controls.

Quite frankly, I never thought I’d see the day, in my lifetime, where a woman or a man of color were actually running for president — that alone is amazing. We’ve come a long way and should be celebrating our journey on another day in the country.

By the time you read this column, we will have decided who is going to lead the United States of America. The very best news of all was that for all of us, for one brief moment, we had the clicker in our hand to choose!

Last modified Nov. 5, 2008

 

X

BACK TO TOP