When you find the remote, wipe it down

Self-isolation is offset by the innumerable time-sucks of television

If quarantining yourself is making you nuts, it’s okay to envy folks in the Cleveland suburb of Lyndhurst, where a pizza shop has a special promotion: order an extra large and get a free roll of toilet paper. Yes, it has come to that.

What’s next? “C’mon down to Crazy Eddie’s Used Cars. We’re ready to deal. Buy a car and get a 12pack of Charmin.”

While the politicians and the doctors figure out our next move, we are instructed to self-isolate and socialdistance ourselves, two new terms that were irrelevant to us a month ago.

But hey, we’ve got the television. It could be worse. Eighty years ago, Americans would have been stuck with a Philco radio and a deck of cards.

Every day brings a new and upsetting revelation. The pandemic worsens. The stock market tanks. Wave after wave of bad news spreads faster than a sneeze mist. We have seen the foreseeable future and we hate it.

You can’t go down to the corner bar. The joint’s locked up. Yet part of me wants to buy a case of Corona Lite somewhere just to help those guys at the brewery. None of this is their fault.

But that would require going out into the world, and the Germ Police don’t want guys my age doing that.

So unless you’re good with your hands and like to make things in the garage, or unless you’re excited about hunkering down for three hours of Monopoly, you’re stuck with TV.

Whatever the opposite of handyman is, I’m it, and I fall asleep during Monopoly, so the TV remote is my new best friend.

I’ve got most of the channels memorized now, a result of my new hobby: binge-watching. Perhaps I’m rotting my brain and ruining my eyesight, but the upside is cool. I’ve managed to rekindle a relationship with a lot of old friends.

I’ve been catching up with “Green Acres,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “My Three Sons,” “The Twilight Zone,” and “Perry Mason,” just to name a few. Oh, and one more: “The Waltons.” For some reason I always had a soft spot for that one. Good night, John Boy.

Fred Flintstone. Andy Griffith. Alfred Hitchcock. They’re all there. I’m seeing episodes I had forgotten about long ago. I never would have rediscovered them if I weren’t incarcerated like a common criminal in my own house, a place I now consider a satellite campus of the county jail.

Here’s another fun activity: Scroll through the channel guide until you find “Titanic” and watch it for the 34th time. This version, laced with commercial breaks that seem to come every 45 seconds or so, will at least consume four hours of your selfquarantine.

The film always ends badly but I like Leo and Kate, so I endure the hyper “My Pillow” guy and the equally hyper emu trying to sell me car insurance. I also sit patiently through the drug commercial that shares the sad saga of the turkey with a bad smoking habit.

Apart from the smoking, he’s got a sweet life in what appears to be a nicely appointed home. Plus, he drives a Jeep. I just want to grab him by his turkey neck and scream at him to give up the smokes for good. He has too much to live for. Well, at least until Thanksgiving.

Maybe in your channel surfing you have discovered Dr. Ho, which sounds like an X-rated James Bond movie but isn’t. Dr. Ho is into serious pain relief that is also seriously expensive. I’ll stick with Tylenol Extra Strength.

I had to avert my gaze when I stumbled across “Dr. Pimple Popper.” The doc’s name is Sandra Lee. Am I in a time warp here? Wasn’t she in “Grease”? No wait, that was Sandra Dee. No, that’s wrong, too. Was it Sara Lee? I’m starting to glaze over from all this isolation. I’ve decided that if my teenage acne ever comes back, I will live with it.

Another channel was quite instructive. I watched a cartoon in which SpongeBob SquarePants demonstrated how to wash one’s hands.

I’m getting personal hygiene advice from a sponge. I realize it was aimed at children, but I was relieved to discover I’ve been washing my hands correctly for my entire adult life.

Between SpongeBob and Dr. Fauci, my hands are in good hands. So a big shoutout to Mr. SquarePants and the good doctor. God help us if they both get sick.

Still, even with TV, I have to ask myself: Is this what living in a Third World country feels like? If so, please Mr. President, get us all back to the First. Or even the Second.

Finally, a few reminders that should go without saying:

If you are the lucky person who scored that last bottle of hand sanitizer from Dollar General, do not hide it from your spouse. That’s grounds for divorce in several states.

With regard to social distancing, 6 feet is 6 feet. Only one of you gets the couch, OK?

And don’t forget to wipe down the remote. You don’t know where that remote has been.