Last week I popped the first disc of the third season of Succession into my DVD player (the library is my Netflix) and pushed the play button on the remote. Nothing happened.

I took the battery cover off the back of the remote and did what I’ve done often over the past few years: twirled the batteries and tried again. I don’t understand why this worked because it seems totally bonkers, but twirling the batteries would somehow revive them. This time, though, nothing happened. I put some fresh batteries in and the remote worked, so my luck extending the useful life of the original batteries that came with the remote well past what I would have thought possible for cheap AA batteries had run out.

For, you see, I purchased the DVD recorder/player on January 14, 2006 at Future Shop in Charlottetown. We used it a lot for the first five years we had it because we had dialup internet until 2010 so streaming wasn’t possible. I would say the player is still used a few times a month, but mostly the remote just sits there and waits.

I will reluctantly drop the Greencells in a recycling container, but these cheapo batteries deserve to take a bow.