Lola and the Battle of the TV Remote

Mother lost the battle of the remote control of the television a few days ago. I'd had all I could take and confiscated it. Mom watches the Turner Clasic Movie channel 99.9% of the time. Occasionally she'd turn it on CNN. Her ability to use the remote has degraded to the point that she's lucky when she gets it to do what she wants. She'd really reached the point where she couldn't remember how to change the channel and could only remember how to turn the volume up and down.

TCM movies are notorious for quiet whispered moments followed in a split second by roaring fights or bombs exploding. A steady diet of this volume clash has driven me nuts. Lola would try to control the volume by turning it up during the quiet scenes. That meant turning it all the way up. Really, topping out the volume. Then when the regular sound returned she'd just sit there and listen to it.

A couple of days ago, while standing in the hall I watched her and realized that she couldn't discern when no one was speaking as compared to the volume being too low to hear. She was sitting there struggling to turn the volume up until the bar reached the maximum, and there was absolutely no sound coming from the movie. There was no music playing or people talking, and she couldn't tell the difference.