Too Many Buttons

There are times I swear buttons will be my undoing. Not the ones on shirts.  I’ve pretty well mastered that technology though I still occasionally get them out of alignment and show up at some speaking engagement with what my wife used to call “drunk buttons.” No, the buttons I’m talking about are found on all manner of electrical appliances.

There was a time when appliances had a clearly labeled on/off switch. At some point, printing the words on and off became inconvenient. So, they began using a symbol rather than words. It looks kind of like a circle with an apostrophe at the top. Eventually, we learned that symbol meant the button turned the machine on or off. In a further economizing effort, they began molding that symbol on the top of the button instead of painting it underneath. For a while, they highlighted that embossed symbol with white paint so you could see it in the subdued light of your TV room. But eventually, even that tiny dab of paint was adding too much to the cost of your $2,000 big-screen TV. So now, you have to use the Braille method to identify the on/off button.

This brings me to my next problem, TV remote controls. For some reason my Canadian satellite TV service required me to use three different remotes. Each one had more than 50 buttons. To this day I have no idea what half of them do. I needed one remote to turn on the TV and control the volume.  I needed a second remote to view the guide and change the channels. The third was required only when, for some unknown reason – a power surge, a solar flare, or a cloudy day in Saskatchewan — all my TV programs would suddenly be in French. My satellite provider showed me that there is an obscure button at the bottom of that third remote called “options.” If I pressed it followed by 999, I could rejoin the British Commonwealth.

When I went back to California in February, I spent a few days in the house where my daughter lives with her boyfriend. They have an elaborate home theater TV system but, somehow, they can manage theirs with just one remote. One day, while they were both at work, I thought I’d watch a little TV. Using the method that I used on my own TV’s in both Mexico and California, I first pushed the button marked “TV,” and followed that immediately by pushing the “on/off” button. Their TV would come on for about three seconds, and then turn off. After several tries with the same result, I decided to go read a book. They had quite a library.  They’re intellectuals.  They read books with hard covers.  

When they came home, they explained that their remote has no “On” button.  You turn on their TV by just pressing the “TV” button. What I thought was the “on/off” button was actually just an “Off” button. So I was turning on the TV, and then immediately turning it off.  I suppose it was my fault for not having learned the Braille symbol for the “Just an Off” button.

Thankfully, most of their kitchen appliances have abandoned buttons altogether.  They’ve been replaced by touch sensitive icons. I suppose they’re easier to clean. But now, with a little too vigorous a swipe with a cleaning cloth, you can accidentally trigger the automatic oven timer to fire up the broiler in the middle of the night.

On my last day there, I thought I’d wash my dirty laundry. But when I went into their laundry room, I was faced with a washing machine that had 25 buttons, and almost as many little lights for identifying the status of the wash cycle. There were nine separate buttons covering the whole gamut from “lightly soiled” to “God awful.” There were six water temperature combinations, one of which said, “tap water cold” followed by “cold.” What was that all about?  I always thought tap water was the cold option. Do you suppose they had cold water piped up from the refrigerator downstairs?

And if you couldn’t find a wash cycle button that met your needs, there was a “custom” button to create your own wash cycle. If you wanted to treat your dirty underwear to a spa-like experience, you could begin with a Jacuzzi pre-soak, followed by a gentle hand wash, a Perrier rinse, and a final spin on the Tilt-A-Whirl. From there it was just a short hop over to the dryer. But their dryer was the size of a refrigerator and had 19 buttons of its own.  It had a tumble dryer on the bottom, and a large cabinet dryer on the top. You could put your clothes on hangers and subject them to everything from a gentle summer breeze to a 20-mule-team trip through Death Valley. There was even a button for introducing a fragrance. What better way to top off their time in the sauna than with an aroma therapy session in the eucalyptus room.

I ultimately decided all this elaborate apparatus was well beyond my pay grade. I’d just wait until I got home to do my laundry. Besides, if my clothes got all this customized attention, they might never want to leave the spa. The socks would be hiding in every nook and cranny. After all, what did my socks have to look forward to at home? Being stuffed into a pair of smelly sneakers? Come to think of it, I might also have had to keep careful count of my jockey shorts. Let’s face it; their prospects back home weren’t all that appealing either.


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Larry Kolczak
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