1. The remote control that you want is always farther away than the ones that you don't.
Are you sitting on the couch? Perhaps watching television? Let's say that you are, because in the hypothetical world of Rule No. 1, you just sat down on The Couch. Someone left the TV on. Your housemate? Your significant other? Your cat? Any of the above. Perhaps all. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the worst television show in the history of television shows has been left on. That's right; some jerk was watching The Nanny and has left it on, leaving Fran Drescher's cacaphonous snorts and nasal whining to explode your eardrums (and eventually your brain) like some sort of hell clarion. To top it all off, you're really lazy. Or you just had a run and your legs are jelly. Or you're Lieutenant Dan. Whatever. Either way, you can't get off the couch. But that's okay, because in the high tech world of Nanny re-runs, we have remotes. And look, they're right next to you. "The one for the DVD player. The one for the CD player. The one for your blender. The one that opens the sock drawer. The T... hey! Where's the TV remote?" you exclaim.
Well, it's one of three places. All of which are further away than the remotes that don't allow you to mute Fran Drescher. If you're lucky it's sitting on top of the TV. This will of course put you in a retro situation, as you will have to get up and approach the TV as people once did in the 1960's. (Like a bunch of barbarians.) If you're unlucky it's under a sofa cushion, hanging out with old McDonalds french fries and pennies that were minted when flagpole sitting was still fashionable. This placement will require you to still get up, but has the added bonus of making you disect your furniture and make unpleasant discoveries about the undersides of your cushions. The only positive side of this is that you may find stuff you forgot you were looking for, like that nice commemorative 15th anniversary pen you liberated from the bank, or a stray Oreo that once escaped its fate. (Thanks to modern food preservatives you can realign cosmic balance and eat that sunuvabitch.) The most terrible option is the one in which the remote is in another room. This is bad for a few reasons.
1. You have to get up off your tush.
2. You have to remember stuff .
3. Sometimes you also have to be a mind reader.
Let me explain this. In the easier, but still annoying scenario that YOU were the one responsible for losing the remote, you're going to have to backtrack and remember all the stuff you might have done with that remote before you lost it. What can you remember? "Well, there was a Magnum P.I. marathon on TV." Okay, good. We're getting somewhere. What happened next? "Obviously I made a sandwich. Or went to the bathroom. Or went to the garage to grab a beer from the fridge." So you backtrack. Bathroom. Garage. Kitchen. If you're really unlucky, you put the remote down while you were making the sandwich. Then you gotta remember what you put on the sandwich and ultimately end up searching in places like the vegetable crisper, or the cheese shelf. Perhaps it's in your onion nook.
The mind reader thing has to happen if you weren't the one responsible for the misplaced remote. Say your housemate lost it. It gets significantly harder then. You can't just recall what you did. Instead you end up asking yourself, "Would John take a shit during a Magnum P.I. marathon?" and "What kind of sandwich would John fashion to compliment 3 hours of staring at hawaian shirts and Tom Selleck's mustache?" (I, personally, would make a ham and medium chedar melt on rye with cold pineapple and thousand island dressing. Just sayin'.) All of a sudden you are forced to either develop latent psychic abilities, or punish your eardrums with one of the worst noises this side of autotune. (Yeah, that's right. Fran Drescher has been screaming this entire time.)
So do yourself a favor and fashion some sort of leash system on all your remotes. If it works for children, it can work for the clicker.
ADDENDUM:There is an exception to Rule No. 1. Occasionally the remote you're looking for is right in the remote basket/box/urn. But even when it is, it's always on the bottom. Always.
