Chance of hearing commercials is remote

By my calculations it's been four years since I last heard a television commercial. I see the people and their lips are moving, but no words come out. You-know-who has gotten, shall we say, a little aggressive with the remote control. A little aggressive nothing—he is two shakes shy of maniacal.

Particular commercials tend to annoy him. Or at least they used to; they can't annoy him much anymore, now that we rarely hear them. Sometimes it is annoying background music, or a classic rock tune being twisted for commercialization, that sends him diving for the remote. Other times it is an annoying voice.

Case in point, he wants to know why the GEICO gecko, and that's GEICO as in Government Employees Insurance Company, has a British accent. Because of that incongruity, the gecko pays. Mute.

Sometimes it is a combination of annoying music and annoying voice combined. In those cases he has been known to sprint in from a different room in the house to mute them. And the doctor asks if he's getting enough exercise.

Now that our commercials are on mute, I often try to guess what product a commercial is shilling. I go for speed. It's like ringing in on Jeopardy, only with no competitors.

The problem is, my first guess is always the same. Having been scarred by the many, many, many commercials for men seeking help with intimacy issues (prior to our current mute policy), I am now likely to guess that nearly every commercial is for one of those pharmaceuticals.

Being that most of the commercials truly are for prescription drugs of one sort or another, I like to release the mute toward the end to hear all the dreadful warnings of things that may happen if you actually take the drug, hoping it may scare me into a healthier lifestyle.

I will say there are commercials that I not only mute but turn the station. Those would be commercials for products for women which seem to be getting more graphic (the commercials, not the women) each week. I liked it better when that genre of commercial featured a female running down the beach or whispering to her mother and the voiceover was vague and discreet. You didn't know exactly what it was, but you knew it was for females and that was enough. Of course, that was in an age of privacy long before anyone foresaw an oversexed Georgetown coed demanding that taxpayers pay for birth control. (I've always wondered why she stopped short and didn't demand coverage for deodorant, toothpaste, hair products, razors and shaving cream.)

Commercials aren't the only things we have trouble hearing. Our youngest daughter was here when the news was on TV and remarked that she didn't know how we could hear the news when we constantly talk over the news. I explained that we already knew the news, we just watch the news to comment on the commentators—their voices, hand gestures and whether they dress the part or look like they just stopped by the studio on their way to a bar to meet someone from match.com.

Actually, we don't watch much television due to the proverbial saying, "There's nothing on." Still, I enjoy turning it on from time to time simply because it is fun to see the husband move fast.

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Lori Borgman is a newspaper essayist, author and speaker. Her newspaper column, appearing in more than 300 newspapers, touches on a wide array of topics ranging from the truth about nagging to the hazards of upper arm flab. She is also the author of the popular essay, "The death of Common Sense ".