If there were an Olympic event for accidentally breaking electronics, my mother would have enough gold medals to need a second trophy case.

It's not that she doesn't understand technology.

It's that technology seems to know she's coming.

Computers freeze.

Printers refuse to print.

TVs suddenly switch inputs.

Cell phones develop mysterious symptoms no one has ever seen before.

Then she hands me the device.

I press one button.

It works.

She stares at me like I'm a wizard.

She has this uncanny ability to do something to a television remote that no other human being could accomplish if they actually tried.

Somehow the TV is on Channel 6...

It's somehow on HDMI 2...

The menu is in Yiddish...

Everybody's speaking Klingon...

And the closed captions are in Bengali.

I don't even know what sequence of buttons would make that happen.

But somehow...

She finds it.

Then comes the part I've grown to dread.

She throws the remote at me.

"I don't know what the fuck happened."

Neither do I.

Five minutes ago, the TV was working perfectly.

Now it's on an input we don't have...

In a language neither of us speaks...

With captions turned on...

And somehow it's showing me a menu I've never seen before.

My job isn't just to fix it.

My job is to figure out what the hell she did.

Now, granted, these days everything has a remote.

In her bedroom alone there's one for the TV.

One for the cable box.

One for the ceiling fan.

One for the dresser lights.

Even the lamp has a remote.

Which, in hindsight, was probably a mistake.

The problem is they're all black.

And her comforter is dark.

So they disappear.

Every evening turns into an archaeological dig.

She starts slapping the bed...

Feeling around under the blankets...

Digging through the pillows...

She somehow manages to pick up three different remotes before she finds the one she's actually looking for.

One thing she manages to do on a regular basis is bring up this giant, blown-up version of the TV guide.

Half of it's off the screen.

The text is the size of billboards.

I don't know what button does that.

I've had that TV for years.

I've never managed to make it happen.

I don't know how she does it.

By the time she finally finds the right remote...

The ceiling fan has changed speed.

The lamp has turned off.

The cable box has done...something.

Then there's trying to explain television.

We have cable.

We have Netflix.

Hulu.

Prime Video.

Disney+.

Paramount+.

Peacock.

HBO Max.

Plex.

Probably a few others I've forgotten.

At any given moment, we have access to thousands upon thousands of movies and TV shows.

Every episode of shows that aired before I was born.

Movies from the 1930s right up to last week.

Pretty much seventy years of entertainment sitting there waiting to be watched.

My mother doesn't use any of them.

She uses cable.

And Roku.

Her TV is a Roku TV.

I've tried explaining that Roku isn't what she's looking for...

It's how you get to everything she's looking for.

I don't think she believes me.

She'll flip back and forth between cable and Roku for twenty minutes.

Then she'll start bitching about how shitty television is these days and how...

"There's nothing on."

I've accepted the fact that every piece of technology we own has two operating modes.

Normal.

And whatever my mother did to it.