Is anyone here old enough to remember walking up to your TV set, pushing a button on the TV...

[LuckyCharms]

...and, you know, the TV would come on, and you would sit back and watch it, and when you wanted to change the channel, say to channel 3, and and you would turn a mechanical knob to channel 3, the TV would immediately change to channel 3, and you would watch that program? And then when you were done watching TV, you would get up and hit the button and the TV would turn off and you would go about your business?

This was well before the present time, when you take a remote device and turn your TV on by hitting 3 buttons on the remote to turn on your fucking cable box and the TV itself, then wait 5 seconds for everything to boot up, and then on the screen, a message appears that says "please call 1-800-Time Waste to have your cable service restored", and you sit there thinking "I haven't once missed a cable payment in, oh, 5 or 6 decades, why is my service cancelled"?

And then you call the Spectrum 800 number to see what's going on, and you get an automated, pleasant female voice asking for the security code on your bill before they talk to you about what your issue is, and you say to this automated voice "I don't know", and she says "I'm sorry, I didn't understand you, please provide the security number on your bill", and you say "Unsure", and the voice says "I'm sorry, I didn't understand you", and you scream into the phone "I don't fucking know", and there is silence for 30 seconds, and then the voice says "I will transfer you to a representative".

Then you get another recording that says "your approximate wait time is 30 minutes". So you put your phone on speaker and sit there trying to eat your lunch before the representative comes on the phone, but they come on earlier than 30 minutes, and you have a mouthful of split pea soup, and you don't want the representative to think you were not there anymore, so you try to talk with the split pea soup in your mouth and you dribble it down the front of your shirt?

Then the representative says since you don't have the security code off your bill, they need to verify your identity another way by asking for your mother's maiden name, your address, your pet's name, and a close up picture of your genitals.

Then, when you get through all of that, you explain the problem, and the representative tells you to unplug the cable box, and you tell him that you have a bad back and you are not moving any fucking furniture to unplug the cable box, so he tells you to use the reset button. so you go to the cable box to use the reset button, but you can't find it because it is recessed and it is black, like everything else on the cable box, so you're going by feel, while the rest of your soup is getting cold. So you yell at your speaker phone "I CAN'T FIND THE BUTTON", and the representative yells back "IT'S UNDER THE SECOND S IN THE WORD SAMSUNG".

So you find the button and hold it for 30 seconds, and the cable box cycles through cryptic codes for 15 minutes and your soup is ice cold by now, while your TV says on the screen "your TV will be with you in a moment".

And the cable box finally resets, but you are getting the same message to call customer service to have your service restored.

So you state that to the representative, and he says that he will have to send a signal to your cable box. And he sends the signal and you wait for another 15 minutes for it to reset, and then finally, the TV comes on, but you forgot why you wanted to watch TV in the first place, so you go back to your cold soup, which now tastes like split pea ice cream.