On a temperamental music player

Like a billion other people on this planet, I've been living a nightmare for close to a month now, waking up every morning in terror, wondering what new names I'll hear today. The weekends have been the hardest, because all I have then is my constant doomscrolling. For the most part, workdays have been easier, because work is a distraction. But yesterday was tougher than usual, and I wrote a whole depressing post about it, and then decided I'm not ready to send it out into the world yet. So it's sitting in my drafts, hoping to see the light of day some months down the line.

So let's talk about something a little more cheerful, 'kay?

We gifted Baba a Bose radio/CD player for his 50th birthday. Well, I say we, but it was Mamma really. And at some point during the past decade that I've been gone, that went kaput, and they bought a new one. Except, as I discovered during my sojourn last year, this new one has a bit of a personality. 

It took me a while to realise that it wasn't my parents turning it on everyday at a very high volume, to a radio channel none of us listen to. It came on randomly everyday at the same time, all by itself, blaring loudly. If the radio happened to be on, and you were listening to a different channel, it would actually switch to whatever that infernal preset channel was. So I decided* to fix it. Since no one knew where the user manual was, I turned to Joi Baba Googlenath, and figured out how to change the alarm settings.

My parents like listening to the English music shows that still come on AIR FM Rainbow** at 12 pm and 6pm, so I went in and set alarms for it to come on everyday at those times, at a far more reasonable volume. Everyone was happy, and I actually won*** Daughter of the Year for a change.

Cut to six months later.

One of my coping mechanisms for the past month has been to have a daily call with the parents, instead of our usual 2-3 times a week. Depending on my meeting schedule (and the father's bridge calendar obvs), I call them either at 8am while making my chai, or at lunch time. And for a few days running, I was getting irritated at how rude they were being, turning on the TV at abnormally loud levels while I'm on the phone with them. 

As it turns out, they were doing no such thing. Their temperamental Bose system took advantage of my departure to change the alarm settings all by itself, and has gone back to turning on at a strange time at a strange volume on a strange channel. And since I'm not there to fix it again, my parents' new approach is to wait till a minute before it comes on, and call out to each other - "the radio's about to come on! go stand near it so you can turn it off!"

Be amused by the little things you guys, because the next time I'm home, I'm going to have to Google how to fix the damn alarm settings all over again.

* Mayyyyyybe less "decided to", and more "was prodded into"

** No, YOU try typing, saying or thinking AIR FM Rainbow without that blessed jingle playing in your head

*** versus just running unopposed