The Remote

Flash Fiction

The Remote

“Where’s the remote!” Russ yelled from the living room.

Nobody answered because, frankly, nobody knew where it was most of the time. Five kids in the house, a father who watched the TV news three times a day (as if it changed much, it never did…) And, four sisters Russ had to put up with who rarely wanted to watch the shows he wanted to watch. One TV in the house. The remote was the key. The person who had it got to pick the station. (Unless the news was on…)

They had just invented the remote recently then. We got one with our new TV! New, because we broke the old one badly enough that it couldn’t be fixed. The remote was so cool!

You just pushed the buttons you wanted and it went to your station like magic! Nobody else could change it either, unless they had the remote, of course. There were no buttons on the actual TV. Dad was the only one who got priority, but we knew enough to give in to the news. Keeping Dad happy was important.

Well, everyone started looking for it now. If Russ didn’t have it, one of us girls might get it first and not have to watch cowboys! (Russ’s favorites) Ten minutes later, still no remote.

Russ was livid, “Somebody stole it.”

We all agreed by now, we’d run out of places to look. We had started yelling at each other even, thinking one of us was hiding it. Even Dad was mad!

Suddenly he yelled, “Every one of you, sit!”

We freaked; he seldom used that voice! We all sat!

And that’s when Mom came in… “Sorry! I forgot it was in my pocket…”

Everyone remembered that day. That story got retold a zillion times.