There’s not much resemblance, but you can tell these remotes are fraternal twins. Both bear the RCA birthmark. Both control a wide variety of home entertainment devices. And if you pinch one, the other one cries.

“What’s wrong? Wake up! Wake up! Honey, what’s wrong? Wake up! Are you OK?”

“Yeah…yeah…God…Man, I…”

“What’s the matter?”

“I was having this dream…it was really weird, like you know how in dreams it’s like you’re in your house only it’s not your house, not your real house in real life?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Well, you were there, and my Dad, and for some reason, that bartender from CBGB -”

“In New York?”

“No, the fake one in St. Louis.”

“Well, the ‘fake’ one, as you call it, has actually outlived the ‘real’ one, which makes the one in St. Louis the ‘real’ one now. But I take your point.”

“So it looked like our regular living room, and we were all watching TV, but then Cavemen was about to come on, so we started looking all over the place for the remote. You know, to change the channel.”

“Of course.”

“And we couldn’t find it, and then your Dad started yelling that he’d found it behind the piano. It looked like our regular piano. So I went over there to get the remote, and…and…I was expecting to see our real remote in real life, the RCA RCR430S - you know, the little one? With the straight edges and the white buttons?”

“Yeah, right, the white buttons.”

“But it…it…God, I can’t get the picture out of my head…”

“It’s OK. You can tell me. It was just a dream.”

“He was holding…this big, curvy remote! It wasn’t our regular remote at all! And it…it…it had blue buttons!”

“There, there…go on, let it out…it’s OK to cry…”

“It was…it was…horrible! Like looking into another world that was just like ours, but gone horribly, horribly wrong! Blue buttons on a universal remote? What – what kind of awful -”

“It was just a dream…don’t worry. That big remote with the scary blue buttons won’t hurt you.”

She thought about his birthday present, hidden away in the basement. First thing in the morning, she’d throw the RCA RCR812 remote she’d gotten him into the dumpster, blue buttons and all.

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