The story I crafted of my own childhood did not include much TV. After all, there were just three channels then [I tell myself], and most households only had one TV [boring black and white]. So, when I considered my childhood, I pictured myself watching TV only occasionally, maybe with my whole family camped around the set to see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan or a special edition of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.

Today, I learned my TV history is revisionist. I was trying to remember which shows were on when I was 10 (Andy’s current age) so I googled “60s TV.” I was amazed, as I skimmed through the many Web sites on the topic, just how many shows I remembered watching religiously. Before school there was Clutch Cargo and Ray Rayner (a Chicago-based show). At lunchtime (we actually walked home from school for lunch) there was Bozo’s Circus. And after homework (must be done before TV–at least there was one limit in our household): Shari Lewis, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Flipper, Batman, Car 54 Where Are You?, the Addams Family, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The list goes on and on. And considering there were just three channels, I must have been watching TV nonstop! (And certainly more than today’s one daily hour of  “screen time.”) Check out the list for yourself at CrazyAboutTV.com.

My first impulse, upon making this realization, was to say proudly, “Well, look how well I turned out, despite this.” The second was to consider the “what ifs”? Without the suck of TV, I might have won first in the science fair. I might have written the Great American Novel by the age of 16. I might have kicked my brothers’ sorry butts in chess. But I guess the good news is that now I can recycle the phrase my mom used to use (which I’d conveniently forgotten until today), “Do something else! You’re glued to the boob tube.”