It's a bomb," said my old mother, the Dreaded Violet. wwww"No it's not, it's the cordless telephone that some wretch left lying under the kitchen table," I said.
"No, it's a bomb," she said firmly.
Oookay. I put on my bomb disposal squad leader face and explained how I was going to carefully place it in the holder to defuse it, and when she heard the click she would know it was safe.
She didn't hear the click because she is somewhat deaf as well as suffering the oddities of old age, but she seemed satisfied. Clearly the woman had been watching too much rubbish on television.
I have banned action films, they are far too disturbing for a 95-year-old who was in the air force during World War II.
Actually, nobody is watching films this month because my television subscription got cut off for non payment of the month in advance bill.
We spent the previous month wrestling with the technicals as relayed over the telephone to fix a problem that was making everything look like a Picasso painting and sound like a Disney mouse with dementia.
A couple of human beings were finally despatched and diagnosed a tree branch from next door getting in the way of the TV dish.
I really must try to remember that particular piece of technological know-how, because once we'd done a slash and trash job on the branch, all was wonderfully clear.
For about two and a half seconds, which was when we had the power outage that went on and off for about three days. And five minutes after that, we got cut off for non payment of account. It seemed to be a sign.
There was a certain amount of shock and horror in the household, especially from the film freak.
That is the one who rarely misses a change of programme at the cinema in any language and has an impressive collection of DVDs.
In the rare moments I have nothing to do that nobody will kill me for if it isn't done, I can always count on the film freak to hit the movies.
Mind you, there are conditions: I am not allowed to complain about the cold (bring a shawl, stupid).
Or about the heat when I actually catch a popular show and there are too many warm bodies around.
Especially I am not allowed to say anything.
But honestly, how can a person help it when they are bombarded by trailers for films that no sensitive mind could be expected to cope with, at a pitch that no human unit should be exposed to.
I make hilarious comments that are apparently not hilarious to anyone else, especially not the person I am with.
As for DVDs, I am not allowed to pick anything since I was told to get something funny and got something titled 'Wit' or 'Mirth' or similar that turned out to be about a long, painful death.
But other people's choices seem to run to themes of man-eating zombies with suppurating wounds, gross killer screaming aliens and genetically modified psychopathic plants.
I prefer murder mysteries that are more Agatha Christie than gritty LA cops and slick legal dramas that apparently nobody else appreciates.
Certainly not the younger daughter, who seems to watch chick flicks that star thirteen year old actors squealing their lines at a pitch only bats can hear.
Or tribal movies with actors saying unintelligible things in no language any adult or non-gang member can understand, apparently patched together randomly from YouTube downloads.
So it definitely was a sign that as I sat in front of a blank television screen, I discovered the list of wonderful films of the world brought in for the FNU Fiji Film Festival this week
They come from exotic locations including Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Poland, Croatia and other more known places including China, India and New Zealand.
Regretfully we won't be looking at the French one, I've been banned from those since we took the younger daughter to see a long, slow moving film about the artist Gauguin in which he was sitting on a piano stool when she went to sleep and was still there half an hour later when she woke up.
And there was that one about the bicycle where they got the reels mixed up and being in French and all we never really found out what happened in the end.
But there are lots of other languages, suitably subtitled, that should lift the quality of my viewing no end.
But most definitely nothing with guns or bombs, I don't want the old Violet to be seeing terrorists under the tablecloth or bombs in the bed.
nSeona Smiles is a frequent writer to The Fiji Times. The views expressed are hers and not of this newspaper.