On the remote chance anyone’s looking for her, she’s busy trying to figure out the TV

Can anyone suggest a top-notch engineering school? I’m trying to operate a flat-screen TV.

I remember the days when turning on a television to watch a favorite show took under five seconds. Today, just to simply find one lousy program, you have to be part wizard, part engineer and possess the Zen-like patience of a guru on a mountaintop.

Here’s a brief history, kids. TV program access has been a pot of slow boiling water since my childhood of console Magnavoxes. These were the giant cathode ray tubes that were encased in real wood and often signed off around midnight. We “streamed” via a rather dramatic, reliable antenna, which was pretty much an outdoor metal clothes dryer strapped to our chimney.

Back then the broadcast world offered just three to five channels. Where I grew up, we watched ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and an indie. Simpler times. Get this, the stations actually matched what they claimed to be. Channel 4 was — holy cow — channel 4.

If you gravitated to a certain network and turned off your TV, the next time you turned on your set it would just be there. In a nanosecond, Samantha Stevens would be twitching her nose in your living room. Truly magic. There was never a complicated dance with clicking and clicking and more clicking and yelling at Alexa. Even if another family member switched from your favorite station the previous night, it would take all of three seconds to get back to your channel.

Eventually cable arrived in my youth, which sharpened the picture and added a generous handful of other choices. Channel 4 was suddenly found on channel 12 or whatever, but we didn’t question it. We shrugged and accepted the new math: 4 = 12. OK. Weird, but doable.

Today, though, many of us have dropped cable in favor of streaming services. The reason? Cable became haughty and expensive. Streaming initially was a deal, like half the cable bill. But in my experience, the monthly fee has been creeping up quite a bit.

Worse, it seems streaming TV services require more accoutrements, like a handful of different remotes and internet and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and satellites and servers and firesticks and phones and microwave ovens and kitchen blenders and definitely Albert Einstein’s ghost.

The real killer is that this cool, hip TV option requires a minimum of 10 minutes to find your program.

In my case, I have to “warm up” the TV by first watching all the stupid logos announce themselves. First, the TV brand floats across the pixels, even though it’s physically glued right there on the lower frame. Then, the streaming service ID emerges with a dramatic entrance including sound effects. It seems to hover on the screen for a lifetime. A few gray hairs later the service asks who in the household is watching. More time, more clicking, more waiting. Sometimes it updates to improve my experience. Ten more gray hairs sprout.

If the above paragraph seems tedious and frustrating to read, that was intentional. Imagine what it feels like to be standing in a room, aiming two portable cockpit-esque gadgets at a flat screen, all for just trying to get a glimpse Al Roker crack a mediocre weather joke.

To make matters worse, the past few months Google has been digging up my neighborhood to add to the underground tangle of pasta. Looks like another stream-y cable-y fiber-y option is on the horizon. All for what? Another way to watch “90 Day Fiance” on The Learning Channel?

I realize this is all a storyboard for the next Dr. Rick commercial, but what’s the solution? For now, I think I’ll rub two firesticks together, light a candle and read a book. A paper one, for old time’s sake.

Reach Denise Snodell at stripmalltree@gmail.com