Russian Spies

Well, if my blog hasn’t already garnered some attention from the US Government, it will with a title like that. 

It was a Tuesday night. I had just gotten home from coaching lacrosse practice, dismissed the babysitter, and was in the kitchen scrambling to get dinner together before everyone, mostly Lou, melted down.

Tighe had just gotten home from work, too, and he had promised Nate and Sam that if they finished their dinner in time, they could watch the latest episode of Fox’s Lego Masters, the reality competition show hosted by Gob Bluth. 

But they had to eat dinner first. 

Sam, of course, was impatient. Deep down, he knows he can’t finish a meal in under 90 minutes, and he couldn’t wait to see which Lego duo would get voted off the show that week. 

He grabbed the remote and bouncing up and down on the sofa, began narrating his thought process as he pointed it at the TV. 

“Hmm, where is it? How do I get to the show?”

Scrolling through the apps on the smart TV, he gave a side-glance to Tighe to make sure he wasn’t going to get in trouble for pushing the limit. But Tighe was sitting on the sofa, juggling a squirmy Lou in one hand and flipping through today’s mail with the other. He had just warned Sam not to turn on the TV, but he was interested to see where Sam’s charade was headed.

After a minute or two, Sam found the YouTube app, one of the few apps that he’s all too familiar with. He began arrowing through the “suggested for you” videos, most of which were related to Peppa Pig, Minecraft, toy unwrapping—any parent knows what I mean by that—and live jam band concerts. We’re eclectic like that.

Suddenly a video with animated ducks and a title in Cyrillic letters popped up.

Now, if you know anything about Sam, it’s that he really doesn’t like Russia. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe it was one of my Cold War lectures that really had an impact. He doesn’t hear anything else that I say, but apparently the fact that we were in a forty-five year nuclear arms race with the USSR really sunk in. And that loathing was solidified when we showed the kids Rocky IV, the one where Sylvester Stallone trains and fights Ivan Drago as an act of vengeance for killing his best friend in the ring. It’s a classic.

Anyway, back to the story. 

“Oooh, the duck one, I want to watch the duck video.”

Tighe glanced up just in time to see the Cyrillic lettering and said, “Sam! Not that one!”

Looking Tighe in the eye, Sam pointed the remote at the TV and hit “ok,” permitting the video to play.

Feigning fright, Tighe said, “Sam, no! It’s a Russian video!”

This news sent Nate, who was standing a few yards away, into a panic.

“Sam, no! What did you do? The Russians!”

Which Tighe found delightful. 

Suddenly becoming nervous, Sam pointed the remote at the TV, closed the app and returned to the home screen.

“Oh, no!” Tighe shouted. “They probably hacked the microphone on the remote so they’re listening to us right now!”

Growing increasingly agitated, Nate began screaming at Sam. “Sam, turn it off! Turn it off! Turn it off!”

The thought of being surveilled by the Russians startled Sam, who was now standing up on the sofa. His fear caused him to bobble the remote as he tried to hastily turn off the TV, thus accidentally hitting the button twice and turning it back on.

Nate, whose anxiety is already borderline alarming, sought protection from our treasonous television and sprinted to the doorway, where he could watch from a safer distance. 

Meanwhile, Sam was still bobbing up and down on the sofa, fumbling the remote in his hands and repeatedly hitting the power button again and again, causing the screen to flash on and off. It was very much the Cuban Missile Crisis gone wrong.

“Oh, no, what did you do?” Tighe was still having fun.

Now more fearful than ever, Nate had raced upstairs and was hunched in a ready-to-fight stance at the top of the steps.

Sam tossed the remote on the ground and scurried past Tighe and out of the room. He was cowering in a pile of coats and backpacks in front of the front hall closet, and his eyes were bulging out of his head in horror, possibly anticipating some sort of imminent Russian invasion caused by accidentally selecting the wrong YouTube video.

And that was enough amusement for Tighe.

“Guys, it’s okay, the Russians didn’t really hack our TV,” he said, balancing Lou as he bent down to pick up the remote.

“They didn’t?” Nate said cautiously. He started to make his way back downstairs, one step at a time, still not surrendering his fight or flight stance in case he needed to sprint away again.

“Oh,” Sam said, nervously wiping his cheeks and climbing out of the coats.

“You really think they can hack our TV from a YouTube video? That’s impossible!”

Well, maybe it’s not impossible, but I do think that if the Russians were going to upload videos with the capability to hack into televisions and spy on American families, they probably wouldn’t put the description in Russian. Seems like a dead giveaway. 

And in case you were wondering how this week’s episode of Lego Masters ended, in a thrilling twist that no one saw coming, the father-son duo that had grown to become Nate and Sam’s favorite team, was voted off.  Or at least that’s the ending the Russians showed us.