When I was a kid, our one lone TV set had two remotes…….
My brother and I.
Dad watching TV and needs the channel changed?
He would yell for my brother or I to jump up and change the channel for him.
Nothing on that he wanted to watch?
This meant endless mind-numbing minutes standing next to the TV, constantly changing the channels, as he sampled each program in the early version of “Channel Surfing”.
Got satellite TV and hate when you lose your picture only to be greeted with a prompt of “Acquiring Signal…Do not change Channel”?
Back when I was a kid, we did not have satellite or even cable…we had rabbit ears.
These rabbit ears needed to be constantly adjusted in order to receive a picture with as little “snow” as possible.
How were these rabbit ears adjusted?
By my brother and I of course.
I am convinced to this day that it was virtually impossible to adjust your ears to a point to where you could get a “perfect” picture.
Many times you would achieve this “perfect” picture for a microsecond, only to have it instantly disappear once you removed a hand from the ears.
Surely these maddening things were invented by the red, fork-tongued demon himself……….
Many of you remember that you could sometimes “fool and manipulate” the ears by attaching tin foil, coat hangers, or small dogs to the ears in order to enhance the reception quality.
We had an obese 35lb Dachshund that was a great signal receptor and I remember watching many a program in great quality as that huge dog dangled off of one grotesquely bent rabbit ear…..
Sometimes, poor “Berful” would be squirming around a little too much and would mess up the picture quality which would usually result in the poor animal being verbally assaulted and pelted with that weeks edition of the TV GUIDE.
After a few years, just the faint “CLICK” of the TV being turned on would send the dog scurrying for cover under the closest bed….
Ahhhh…….Good Times……
Sometimes I wonder if the only reason my parents had children was so that my Mom would no longer have to spend long hours next to the TV adjusting the rabbit ears and changing the channel.
“Honey Dear…my feet are tired…can I sit down now?”
“After you find Gunsmoke for me! If ya don’t like it…..have a kid that can take over for ya!!”
I remember that when I was about 12 years old, I would sit on the couch, would grumble about having to get up to change the channel or fiddle with the rabbit ears, and would dream of the day that I could have my own son or daughter to jump up and be my TV slave for me…..
I remember when I was in Junior High School and my Dad got his first remote control for the TV. The remote was the size a textbook and had buttons about 3 inches high on it. This allowed us to kick back in comfort and surf through the 7-9 channels that we had…….until the reception would go bad and one of us kids would have to jump up and adjust the damn rabbit ears!
Of course, once I grew up and moved out of the house….I inherited many of these TV’s….and I got to spend my first few years as a father screaming at my own kid to jump up and adjust the ears for me…..
Ahhhhhh…….Good Times………….
