The elephant in the room

Overall Pat and I have a pretty harmonious relationship. We try not to sweat the small stuff and we "learned" during our first year of marriage how to communicate about disagreements without it leading to an arguement. Because really, who wants to argue? It also helps that if we are disagreeing about something we usually end up laughing because it's hard to take ourselves seriously :o) However there is an obstacle in our marriage that truly might take us to counseling. Enter exhibit A...

We will call him "bane" as in the "bane of our marriage". Bane entered our lives about a year ago when Fin threw our old remote in a bathtub. Pat ran to Walgreens to get a new one and came home with this monstrosity. When he took it out of the bag I laughed thinking it was a gag gift. But then no other small remote followed. That was it.  Pat responded to my cries of "you CAN"T be serious" with the age old man statement of "but it was on sale". To which I replied..."FOR A REASON!". Back and forth we went. It seriously was like having an Ipad without anything cool about it. It was heavy, had enormous buttons and was the length of my arm. We had a legit fight about it which ended in me refusing to use it and Pat using it every chance he got while declaring his love for it. Of course he loved it, it was his size!
    A few months later we got satellite and had to use a new remote (score!). Bane fell by the wayside until this past weekend when I was organizing and moving some furniture. I found Bane while Pat was at the gym and quickly ran outside and threw it away in the outside trash. When Pat came home I proudly showed off my ornanization. Pat applauded me with a smirk on his face and said, "It looks awesome but I think you're missing something" and pulled the dang remote from underneathe his shirt. He found it in the outside trash while throwing something away.
    I will never be rid of that thing...it's like a cockroach that you can't kill. But try I will! I have big plans for Bane next month when Pat's gone on a business trip. It may or may not involve a long drive on a deserted road.