Men hog remotes, but women are gaining
In our household, it is an unwritten rule that he who has the remote controls the 51" purveyor of rich, creamy, tubular goodness. Of course, in this respect our household is like virtually every other in this great land of ours. Being the man of the house naturally means that I get the remote...yeah, right....
Let's face it, in many homes, touching a man's remote is sacrilege.
"You let that thing get moved off the table and you can hear me scream, 'Where's my remote?' " said Ritchie McQueeney of Columbia, S.C.
When it comes to remotes, a lot of men have a lot of the Tim Allen character in "Home Improvement" in them. With the remote comes the power to control the room. And the more powerful the remote, the better.
"I've got one powered by a little Honda motor. Now nobody can overpower my remote," said McQueeney, jokingly. (We think.) "I've got one that can change the channels when I'm standing outside."
Wives know they have to pick their spots to grab the remote.
"If a Duke basketball game is on, you can't touch the remote in my house," said Columbia's Michele Taylor-Brown of her husband, Derrick. "Other than that, we're pretty good about sharing it. As long as basketball isn't on, he's not a remote hog."
Some men take control of the remote to extremes. For instance, Alyson O'Mahoney, a New York public relations executive, may be an accomplished woman in total control of her career, but that still doesn't mean her husband is willing to let her take charge of the clicker.
"He has such a control thing with the remotes that he doesn't even trust me to change the batteries in them correctly -- as if I couldn't determine a AA from a AAA battery," she said. "Or that they will self-explode if done incorrectly, which is basically impossible anyway."
Once we got Eric his own television for Christmas, the issue seems to have resolved itself. It was interesting, though, that something as seemingly insignificant as a remote control could have been a potential source of conflict. Of course, the word "control" might have something to do with it, eh??.
