The case of the missing clicker

The Boston Herald

The TV clicker is missing. It vanished 10 days ago somewhere between 7 p.m. and 8:15 p.m.. The 14-year-old had it last. This is fact. It was in my hand and she stole it from me.

"Give me that," she said, grabbing the remote control before I could. I had mistakenly changed the station instead of turning up the volume during a riveting scene of "Life Goes On." The entire family yelped.

"I can't believe you still don't know how to use this thing," my daughter said. At that point, she put the clicker beside her on the couch, a normal thing to do, but a mistake in our house. My husband, "Mr. You-Know-Where-The-Clickers-Belong" has this thing for clickers. Something close to awe, in fact - the man's eyes get glassy when he holds one in his hand. And so, more than a year ago, he made them their own little "place for everything and everything in its place."

So he had a good reason. So he was tired of hunting for the clickers every night. Usually he found them right away (we used to have four) under the couch or under the cushions. But sometimes he had to dig for the clicker, through piles of clothing/books/tapes/junk in a kids' room and that took a long time.

Then when the clicker was found, everyone denied ever having touched it, ever having taken it from the family room. I didn't do it. It wasn't me. That's what was said.

So, to save time and increase family harmony, "Mr. I'll-Show-You-A-Better-Way" glued Velcro on a wall behind the couch, glued Velcro on all the clickers, then summoned everyone into the family room and announced that

It actually was a brilliant idea. And it actually worked for a while. "Are the clickers where they should be?" I found myself asking. "Make sure you put those clickers back," Everyone who walked into our house, effused. "That's so smart," people told my husband. "You're so clever."

But you know how it is. You clean out the medicine cabinet or a kitchen drawer and you organize everything and swear up and down that you're going to stay organized, and two weeks later you're back to your old ways. It took longer to get lax with the clickers, but in time even my husband started forgetting and leaving the things on the couch or on the coffee table.

The night the clicker permanently disappeared there were seven people in the room. Three of them left at 8 p.m. to go home. All were phoned later and interrogated. ("Are you sure you didn't accidently put it in your pocketbook? Check again. Look harder," my husband said to his mother).

The family room was ransacked, couches and cushions and end tables turned upside down, the television moved, the record cabinet, every inch of it, inspected. The search then spread out into the kitchen, then to front hall, the bathroom, the living room, the dining room.

At 11 p.m., after covering the entire house, my husband made an announcement: The dog must have taken it. The dog must have stolen the clicker and buried it in the backyard. Mr. I'll-Get-To-The-Bottom-of-This-Yet grabbed a flashlight and headed outside.

I watched from the family room window as he searched in the dark for holes. I watched as he unearthed a half-dozen bones and one Cheweez. I watched as he trudged, shoulders hunched and clickerless, back inside.

He has been clickerless for 10 days now. A man without his clicker is not a pretty sight. The family had been trying to help. We offer to get up and switch stations for him. We have been diligent about putting all the other clickers back.

But the empty space on the Velcro strip is a constant reminder of a clicker that simply disappeared.