This device in my hand changes worlds. I simply point and wish it so, and it does the magical. It is a time portal. It can take me into the past and also into the future.

I marvel at its capabilities. Indeed, sometimes I wonder if it is too complex for its own good. It has far more features than I would ever use. Most of the time, I keep to a smaller subset of its functions. I change my environment around me, making it harder at times and softer at others.

I don't mind that it resembles a hefty magic wand. I genuinely don't swish it like a wand, though there are times when I do a kind of wave when I point, commanding it to work. At those times, it does its job over the ether, making the changes I have asked. Occasionally, it is blocked, but most times, it works without restriction.

And so it is with my television remote—the changer of channels, the raiser of volumes as if from the dead, and the smotherer of volume as if to quench what is overpowering. It takes me into the future and the past with hardly a stop in the present. How could I live without this magical device carved from a kind of plastic obsidian with its brightly colored buttons for more than I would or ever could use?

I am indebted to it. It saves me from having to get up and do the work myself.