And Do You Know What? I Love It.

I went home last night, home meaning my parent's house on Glenside Road, on the twinkling hill of any basically Jewish suburb within a ten mile radius of the city.

I met my father in midtown around 9, and then we drove back together (listening, uncannily, to his Neutral Milk Hotel). We bent our heads while we ran in from the garage, because if sleet doesn't see you it won't get you, and then I unlocked the door and my mom kind of, like, chimed "hello!" from the den.

She was at her laptop, wearing her blue plaid bathrobe, and watching college basketball. None of that was strange. Her eyes--one is blue and one is green, no joke--got really big while she was talking about a potential snow day.

"Well, first I heard six to 12 inches. Then I only heard four. But then..."

Daddy & I wait for it.

"THEN, Gary Cohen said he heard six for New York." Gary Cohen is the Mets' announcer. He's not a meterologist, and, last night, he was watching the Metsies beat Boston (no thanks to Billy Wagner) in Florida.

"Mom." I said. "Mom, Gary Cohen probably just heard the same forecast you did at first. I mean, right?"

Whatever. Still, none of this was strange. Until: my mother realized she had a serious debate on her hands, what with Cohen's geographical and professional lacks of credibilities, and muted the television.

She didn't get up, she just Muted The Television.

My parents got a remote! And when I looked, I saw that they'd gotten some sort of giant cable box, too! It is earth shattering. For years we had no remote, and only the cable channels that broadcast baseball. Then someone gave us an old TV and we had one very pygmy-ish remote that only controlled the volume.

Last summer my parents called Cablevision because they were being charged a "remote control" fee. My dad complained to the customer service representative and she was incredulous.

"You don't have a remote?"

"No!" My father's voice is strong and I bet it was theatrically straining at this point. "No, we don't have a remote."

"But," countered Tanya down there at Cablevision HQ, "but how do you change the channel?"

"We get up," said my father, who was telling the WASPy God's honest truth and oozing with that deity's chilly contempt, too, "we get up and change the channel."

My parents love that story. They are incredibly proud of themselves. And yet, following my complete freak-out about the number of buttons my mother had at her fingertips (she won't hold the thing, just lays it on the arm of the couch and presses), she looked up at me, all coquettish & grinning like she'd just received a personal phone call from Weatherman Gary Cohen. She said "and you know what? I love it."