Almost every morning since Christmas, I’ve awakened to find a different item covering the receiver that goes with the TV set and allows us to receive a zillion channels, most of which deal with shopping and preaching.
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me . . . a sock that covered the blue light on the receiver that tells us it’s on. On the second day, My Delight balanced a pecan turtle over the blue light.
On the third day of Christmas, my spouse (by the way, the true love, My Delight and my spouse are one and the same) stood up a greeting card. Each day featured a different barrier.
My iPod has become the permanent blocking fixture.
I told her it’s impossible to get reception when the receiver is covered. It needs to be exposed to the remote. We had company over the holidays, and I used that occasion to remind my grandson and namesake that “When I was your age, we didn’t have remotes; we needed to walk to the TV set to change the channel. And sometimes the walk was more than 20 feet.� I also mentioned the deep snow, but that was on the TV screen.
Fact is, when I was Arthur’s age, TV was barely nascent. It was more like a magic lantern show whose action and plot nevertheless seemed more plausible than some of today’s “reality� programs.
But back to the blue lights:
It was during the conversation on barriers and blue lights that I gleaned the real reason Bonnie placed various items there: She couldn’t stand the glare. But since the light was on for a reason, that defeats the purpose of high tech. I explained it’s like putting liniment on the leg that doesn’t have the soreness.
Well, it turns out that of all the glowing lights in our house, that bright blue one on the receiver was the most annoying. Upon rising, we assembled various visiting family members to help count the number of lights that are on constantly, though not necessarily in use.
Are you ready? In addition to clocks that glow and go “bump� in the night, we have a newly added treadmill, one of whose programs replicates a quarter-mile track. It has too many lights to count. Our printer has a light to show it’s on, and others to display the copy-print-scan mode. The laptops emit a constant glow, as do various battery chargers, plug-in flashlights and a power pencil sharpener.
Our son Benji said entering that room reminded him of the Strip in Las Vegas (the other one). Another son, Stan, visiting from Denmark, kept count and added, “See the blazing tools before us,� as son Diego joined the chorus: “Dad, wire you collecting so much stuff? Watt you have is too much stuff,� he said, glowingly.
Stan, who earns a living writing computer manuals for illerates like me, beamed, “Dad, if you read the manuals to all the stuff you buy, you could probably get by with far less stuff, and your electricity bill would go down because you wouldn’t need all those lights.�
He offered a ray of insight. People hate to read instructions. But I’m not the only one. Next time you unwrap your Epson or Lexmark printer, notice that there’s always an oversized “quick setup� sheet that obviates having to read the tekkie stuff.
Once, I lamented to local electrician Bruce Goke that any time there was a power surge or interruption in service, I practically needed to take a day off work to reset all the digital clocks in our ohm. Even more revolting was having to reprogram the TV sets and VCRs that have internal clocks, far different from the magic lantern variety of yore, whose controls were simply on, off, soft and pure static.
Goke illuminated the subject, saying service interruptions today are far less common than before; the difference, he said, is that people have more things to reset when there’s an outage outrage.
Bruce was correct. It reminded me that even at Immaculate Conception, where I attended school with his mother, Theresa, wiring was primitive, inadequate and iffy. Any time we noticed the lights flickering in the chemistry lab or gym, we knew some cafeteria worker downstairs had turned the electric mixer up high.
And that usually meant that for lunch we’d be having whipped cream on top of last week’s brownies.
Around 1950, when my parents added two rooms to my childhood home, it seemed sufficient — almost extravagant — to have a 50-watt fixture on the ceiling and only two outlets. One allowed for a reading lamp, and the other, on the opposite side, was to illuminate the dresser.
In later years, as my sisters came for visits, there’s no telling where they managed to plug in their curling irons, blow dryers, lighted vanities, battery chargers and stereos.
Even our newer house, which generally complies with recommended “one outlet for every four feet of wall space� seems way insufficient, in light of the need for power strips just to accommodate several of us using our laptops and enjoying the new American way of close family communicating.
All our stuff, which we acquired because it was supposed to simplify our lives and save us much time, sometimes makes us want to divest ourselves of much of it.
Maybe we’ll sell it off and call it a blue light special.