R.R.I.P.

So my teen-aged son, in a bone-headed early career step on his way to becoming the world's next mega-star lead singer, loses the one pick I found for him to allow him to practise on my guitar.

First it falls into the acoustic guitar. I instruct him to turn the instrument upside down and shake it all around until the pick falls out.

He does that, the pick falls out, but he can't find it. It's gone. Then he drops the guitar on the floor.

I'm thinking can I be like The Who's Peter Townsend and bash it over his head?

I don't.

He's leaving in an hour for a band practice/sleepover at his friend Alex's place. He's in a "pick panic." I'm in a "Don't murder him just yet" dynamic.

They haven't even played a song yet far as I know, but they already have a name for their band: Final Crisis. I'm sending him a not too subtle message that this may be HIS final crisis.

I regain my composure. I start searching for the bag with the other picks I know I have in my apartment. Sift through the drawers. Check out my "junk I can't throw out" container.

Rustle through closets, empty storage boxes, go through the cabinet thingy where I keep all my books, board games, 18 sets of cards, cribbage boards and atlases, etc.

I notice a theme here. I can't find the damn picks, but I sure am finding a lot of remotes. TV remotes, VCR remotes, CD player remotes, generic replacements for those dead remotes.

At the end of it all, I find a total of 12 remotes, all past their prime or at least long ago left on my own personal scrap heap of technology. Gasp. It's a veritable Requiem for Remotes, a Testament to TV, and more.

Back to my son for a brief moment. I did find the bag of picks in my guitar case and he was able to get away for his gig with Final Crisis, although I have urged him to reconsider that name with his band mates.

I'm sure when he returns none of the five picks I found for him will return with him. But at least he can't say I didn't supply him with everything he needed when he left here.

But these remotes...there's something eerily strange about seeing them all bunched together, passed by, discharged of their duties, made obsolete by the purchase of other TVs or CD players or because they didn't work any more.

Just lying around, forgotten...no warm hands holding them, no thumbs pressing their up and down channel buttons, their mute controls, their on-off switches. They're dead, but they're still with me.

They haven't had a proper burial.

So I've lined them up next to each other.

I'm singing Amazing Grace.

May the Remotes Rest In Peace.