Pressing All the Right Buttons

For some reason, Daryl loves buttons.

No, it was neither the clothes buttons, the belly button nor John and Jenson Button. He is crazy for the buttons on electronic gadgets like the remote controls and phone at home.

We found out months ago when we put him on the sofa to sit on his own, which he likes a lot. As usual, he arms were flapping like a mad bird and slapping his legs and the sofa. It was no big deal for us as he had already been doing this for quite a while at that time and we knew that he could never lift off like a plane. But suddenly, we could not longer hear the clapping sound anymore. As we were worried that something bad might have happened to him, we checked him out immediately.

Something bad had really happened, but not to him.

It turned out that something really bad had happened to our remote controls, which had been put into a bag slotted along one of the sofa's armrests.

What happened was Daryl somehow discovered the remote controls on the armrest and decided to play with it (probably out of boredom). I am not sure whether it was a touch of genius (no pun intended), but I clearly saw him aiming his index finger right at the buttons of the remote controls. Amazingly, he knew that the plastic portions of the remote controls are not meant to be pressed.

If you are wondering what bad thing had happened to the remote controls, you must have too much free time at hand to read my random and senseless thoughts on this tiny little thing called "Blog". Here you go: Do you like your entire body covered in saliva? Apparently, we were a little too late in finding out the torture he's had inflicted upon the remote controls, as he had already tasted them and found them neither tasty nor chewable when we came to their belated rescue.

Talk about damage control: In the days after, we decided to remove the batteries of one of the remote controls and let him play with it under our close supervision, in order not to inflict any more harm on it again. I am not an expert on human biology, so I have no idea how Daryl could leave so much saliva on the controls which would have drown them to death but for my intervention (I know you're thinking mouth-to-mouth resuscitation). But my wife also told me that the remote control for our TV is not functioning properly these days.

Likewise, Daryl also loves playing with the phone. He would press the buttons and be amazed by the "beeping" sounds it produces. But when we put the phone onto his ear and asked him to listen and talk to person at the other end, it looked as though he was wondering how a fluffy and messy mass of fat like Yours Truly can sneak into the tiny phone at home. He was simply stunned, perplexed by one of the greatest mysteries of mankind.

If Daryl turns out to be the second coming of Albert Einstein, a lot of credit should go to these tiny little gadgets.

And if I turn out to be really good at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on gadgets like remote controls, full credit should go to Daryl.