Plectron

When we moved out to the country when I was in seventh grade, we were unable to get any T.V., local, cable, antenna or otherwise. There was no digital back in the old days... My parents finally got cable, unfortunately long after I had moved out. With that T.V. came a whole host of other problems, i.e., setting the clock, plugging in the VCR, setting the clock on the VCR, you get the picture. My sister used to "borrow" the VCR and then return it without plugging it in, thus ensuring my parents would never use it again and she could have it. My brother swears that scene in City Slickers where Billy Crystal is trying to explain setting the clock on the VCR is from a VERBATIM transcript I must have prepared shortly after starting court reporting school. But I digress. One day while we were home visiting, my dad says, "Where's the plectron? Who has the plectron?" Well, since we had never HEARD that word before, we proceeded to calmly question him as to what this plectron might be. If you know my dad at all, you're totally not surprised he called the remote control a plectron. The funny thing is, though, that he didn't actually make up the word. There is such a thing as a plectron.

A Plectron is a specialized VHF/UHF single-channel, emergency alerting radio receiver, used to activate emergency response personnel, and disaster warning systems. Manufactured from the late 1950s, through the late 1990s, by the Plectron Corporation in Overton, Nebraska, hundreds of thousands of these radios were placed in homes of first responders across all of North America.

also ~

Noun

1.

plectron - a small thin device (of metal or plastic or ivory) used to pluck a stringed instrument