THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409150191
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
My wife is a dear woman and I love her more than life itself. She is smart, beautiful, interesting, kind and wise. She makes my life better in a thousand ways.
But don't ask me to watch a movie with her.
Every time we pop a tape in the machine, she goes to sleep. If everyone reacted as she does to movies on the VCR, the sleeping pill companies would go out of business.
If she would stay asleep, it would not be so bad. But after an hour or so she wakes up and wants me to explain, preferably in a sentence or two, what Bergman has been up to or how many acts of senseless violence Arnold has committed.
It makes me crazy, in no small part because often I haven't fully grasped the plot myself. It is a hard thing to admit that you have been watching a movie for more than an hour and have absolutely no idea what is going on.
I am not blameless, either.
Occasionally, we will rent a movie that bores me. Something in French, perhaps, or one of those movies that was apparently cast at The Home for the Theatrically Challenged.
I will leave the television to make popcorn, answer the telephone or just wander around for awhile. I wander too much, and when I return the film is reaching what passes for a climax.
I stand in the doorway, attempting to figure out what is going on. I try to keep my mouth shut, but sooner or later I begin to make snide comments. I can't help myself, really. Snide comments are, sad to say, my initial reaction to things that I don't understand.
The other great tribulation of modern marriage we have figured out, more or less. I am speaking, of course, of who controls the remote.
Actually, our arguments were not so often about who controlled the thing as they were about who had it last, that is to say, who lost it.
Each of us spent fitful, cursing moments each day searching for the remote until one of us found it, usually under his or her own pillow.
My wife came up with the solution to that problem. She went out and bought two replacement remotes.
His and hers.
I did my part by attaching Velcro to each of them so that they stick on our bed stands.
Dueling remotes. What a concept! I don't know why televisions don't come with two remote control devices, maybe more. Why not a remote for everybody in the family?
My wife's genius has not only solved our lost remote problem, it has solved another of life's most perplexing problems, too.
That problem is, of course, what to give for wedding gifts.
When you reach a certain age, the children of your friends begin to get married. The problem is, you don't even know these kids. Usually, they live in another time zone and went to school at a place you vaguely remember from the 1985 basketball tournament. You saw them when they were 5 or 6 and again when they were 14 or 15. You can only guess as to whether they would rather have a crock pot or a souffle dish.
But every young couple, regardless of their taste, could use his and hers remote controls.
And maybe a little advice about watching movies together, too. by CNB