Z is for Zapper

A to Z Challenge

Here is a picture of a man holding a remote control.
Unfortunately, it's not my man.

The zapper in my house is the remote control for the television. When the dearly beloved is out in the pub regaling anyone who will listen with his views on every subject from aardvarks to  zyzzyva (destructive weevils), I decide what I am going to watch on TV, switch to the channel and leave the zapper close at hand.

When the DB is in charge of the zapper (i.e. whenever he is in the house) it is welded to his hand and he's zipping through the channels faster than a texting teenager on speed.

My head spins as before my very eyes whooshes two seconds each of the news, Coronation Street, a tennis match, Friends, Criminal Minds, a National Geographic programme about lemurs, something about Hitler, Goodfellas…ah, stop. Goodfellas is his favourite film so he watches this for ten minutes, mouthing the words with the actors as he knows it so well. I go and do something different. I know what Joe Pesci is going to do to that poor man and I don't want to see it again.

I rarely see the beginning of a programme because he's so busy zapping about that we miss it. And heaven forbid we should ever see an advert. Come the commercial break and he's off again, as if viewing a two-minute ad extolling the virtues of cornflakes is going to make him go blind.

Sometimes he's on his laptop and the TV is just background noise. There might be something on that I want to watch so I ask him nicely, "Can you pass the zapper, please?"

He looks up, fear in his eyes. "Why? What?"

I tell him I want to watch a different programme. 

"What is it? What channel is it on?

I tell him, "It's OK. I can change the channel if you give me the zapper."

By now he's starting to sweat and grips the zapper until his knuckles go white. "Tell me the channel and I'll do it for you."

In all relationships you must pick your battles and I decide this one is not worth the fight so I tell him what he wants to know. He switches over for me, the sweat beginning to dry on his brow and the twitches calming down.

Sometimes I wish you could zap people.....

• So that's it for the A to Z Challenge. I have learned that there is an awful lot of good writing in blogs and that I can be self-disciplined enough to post more frequently than I have in the past. I hope, too, that I have made connections with other bloggers that will last for a very long time. See you later in the blogosphere!