Remote Control

My remote control got lost. The day before, which was a Tuesday, I had it in my hands casually flipping through the channels at 8am in the morning drinking my tumbler of fresh milk and hotdog on-a-fork. That’s my new daily routine. I used to drink a tumbler of hot mix of Milo and milk with 2 pieces of bread and (peanut) butter. I changed it but I digress.

More than 24 hours later, after a brutal day at the office I flopped on the living room couch, clipped my headset to the tv so as not to wake up my housemate who was fast asleep and looked for the remote. It wasn’t on the couch where it is usually left by its last user. I looked underneath the couch, the tv cabinet drawers, and the shoe rack. Heck, I even looked at the refrigerators and the garbage can. But it was gone. Caput. An electronic device that has been to three households excluding the time when I brought it with me to my hometown which is approximately an hour away by plane is nowhere to be found!

The next day, I casually asked my housemates where the remote control was. Guess what? They let a one-year-old kid play with the damn thing. He was holding it one minute and the next thing it was gone. They looked everywhere and even sifted through the garbage but it wasn’t there. Now, I’ve read hundreds of books and even more hundreds of movies but I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand how a one-year-old kid could make an object disappear. This is not Privet Drive. This is not even make-believe! This is real-life!

I mentioned this to a friend and he told me why not buy a universal remote. Because that remote control felt good in my hands. And it’s gone. If I want to channel surf now, I had to like drag the couch near the tv, strategically put my feet near the channel button and let my toes do the surfing. Pathetic.

The loss of my remote got me thinking that maybe one of the reasons why I am so pissed is because I’m losing control over my own life. I’d be turning 28 in two-months time and I feel like I am a disappointment – to my family, my friends, my leads, my teammates.

A little more than a decade ago, after placing third on my graduating class I felt like my good luck wasn’t going to end. That the success I had in high school would carry its way throughout college and the rest of my adult life. I was wrong. I didn’t graduate cum laude (my GPA was 0.02 shy of clinching the title) and almost failed the licensure examination because I got stricken by the flu. I keep botching my job which I initially thought was the perfect work for me and I still think it is.

I thought then that by now I will be the one giving the orders and not the taking the orders. I thought then that by now I can be a good provider to my family and not a so-so provider. I thought then that by now I would have my own place and not cohabiting with blood relations. I thought then that by now I could by the electronic gadget that I want at will and not tormenting myself to buy or not to buy an IPod lest I go overbudget. I thought then that by now at night I would have warm body to hug and not throngs of pillow by my side. I thought then that by now I would be mirthlessly happy and not pouring out my unhappiness to a keyboard.

My life now might be a disappointment to some but it is to me. I place myself on a pretty high pedestal and I have myself to blame for it. I weighed myself but found wanting. Maybe if I buy myself a universal remote control, as my friend advised, I’d be able to gain a few pounds to my weight.