There were view choices then. Our channels were limited to NBC, CBS and ABC, with a few other stations available when the rabbit ears could be twisted in just the right direction.

Televisions came with just two basic control knobs—one for volume and the other for station selection (there were others for things like horizontal hold, vertical hold and contrast, but Dad threatened our very lives if we ever touched them).

There were no remote controls, no video recorders, no cable ... just a channel called UHF that produced only snow but offered a promise of radical things to come. And a satellite dish? Well, the only satellite we knew of was Sputnik, and a dish could either be a dinner plate or Marilyn Monroe (remember, that was pre-ERA).

But, as they say, we've come a long way, baby. We no longer refer to an attractive woman as a dish, and we no longer have to get off the couch to change channels on the television.

The remote control has revolutionized TV viewing. It's now possible to adjust the volume, surf hundreds of stations, mute the sound during commercials and fast forward or pause a video, all without ever lifting your behind off the couch. It's remarkable.

Trouble is, as one of those electronically-challenged guys who still struggles to program the VCR, the remotes are just getting way too complicated.

But I still love the remote. And even if I don't always know the right buttons to push, I still push the buttons.

"Could I please have the remote?" asked the oldest the other day.

"Why?" I asked right back.

"Because you're driving me crazy!" he screamed.

Well, that didn't seem like a very good reason to me, so I continued to punch the buttons in search of a program that looked interesting. But I must have punched the wrong buttons, because red lights started flashing and no button I pushed would make them stop.

So I said, "OK, you can have the remote," and I tossed it to him.

"Good, you were ... " He stopped in mid-sentence when he saw the flashing lights.

"You idiot!" he cried. "What the heck did you do?"

"Uh, well, um," I stammered, "I'm not really sure."

Like I said, I don't really understand all of this electronic stuff. When I was a kid, we had a television set, a record player and a couple of radios—one that plugged into the wall, and one a transistor ... and they were both AM. That was the extent of our electronic entertainment system.

Now, since the oldest has returned home from college, we've inherited so much electronic stuff that the wall in our family room looks like a Circuit City display case.

Some were already there—the TV, the VCR and the stereo. We had a remote to operate the TV and VCR ... the stereo we tuned by hand.

Now we have the TV and VCR, but they've been joined by a DVD player, a CD player and a digital signal processing center (whatever the heck that is). We have a satellite dish and cable, and we have two huge speakers that dwarf any other piece of furniture in the room.

And to operate all of this equipment, we don't have one remote ... we have three remotes. How they interact with one another I don't really know, even after the kid conducted something of a remote clinic for the rest of the family.

"To turn on the television, you push this button on this remote, then to get to the dish you push that button on that remote, and if you want sound, you take the third remote and ... "

I tried to follow along, but I understood my college psych professor better than I did this remote lesson ... and I got a "D" in psychology!

"What do I do if I just want to turn on the TV and watch the evening news?" I asked.

"Go upstairs to the TV in your room," he said.

Well, now that sounds simple enough.

Remotely challenged? Yes, completely.