B and I came home from our date night to find our remote control wasn’t working.  The power button was lit up, but it refused to do anything.  I tried a few different things to fix it, but nothing worked.  The cause of this sudden malfunction was a seemingly unsolvable mystery.

I spent about an hour this afternoon setting up the fancy new universal remote control – installing the software, checking for updates, entering the make and model of our modest collection of home entertainment devices, etc.  Towards the end of the tedious process, I mentioned to the boys that we’d have to be careful not to drop this remote as it could break.  This comment resulted in an interesting conversation…

A: “Yeah, I dropped the other remote lots of times.”

Me:  “Really?  When?

A:  “Last night, when Grandma was here”

Me:  “Why did you do that?”

A:  “Well, I wanted to see where the batteries go.  When I dropped it before the batteries came out, so I kept dropping it until they came out again.

Me:  “Wow, how many times did you drop it?”

A:  “I don’t know.  A lot of times, I guess.  They just wouldn’t come out, so I kept dropping it on the floor.”

I was more amused than angry.  I could just picture him dropping the remote over and over again until finally the battery cover popped off – kind of like a Herring Gull dropping a clam on the rocks in an attempt to smash the shell and get to the juicy flesh inside.

I can’t wait until he tries the same trick with my laptop…