05/08/2001

By / The Dallas Morning News

I hear there are people out there who don't have a television.

To me, this would be akin to not having, say, indoor plumbing – a condition too harsh to imagine. But the TV-less among us don't seem to feel their lives are lacking. From what I understand, most of them made this choice while fully conscious and under no threat of bodily harm.

So, the other night, I decided that maybe we should see how the other half lives.

"Do you think we should try to keep our TV off for a week?" I asked my husband.

His eyes grew wide as he exclaimed, "A WEEK!" After his uproarious laughter started to die down and he could speak again, he said, "You can't keep it off for a minute! Sometimes you have to have two TVs on at once, just in case you have to walk into another room!"

I soon grew tired of his ridicule and exclamation points, so we dropped the subject.

Despite my bond with television, I did go ahead and have kids, who are 2 and 1 – the age group authorities feel shouldn't even know what the initials TV mean, much less ever watch one. If they do, we parents risk being accused of the dreaded phrase, "using TV as a baby sitter."

Hey, if that's what I were doing, I'd expect TV to change diapers, read the kids some books and attempt to put them to bed before we get home but ultimately fail every stinking time so that we have to say, "Oh, look, you guys are still up!" and still have to pay TV its requested $8 an hour.

No, I think of our TV as something that's just on all the time like, say, our indoor plumbing. But I'm smart enough to keep it on shows that would be hard-pressed to harm them, like Oprah. (And, by the way, nobody should ever say anything bad about Oprah. She's saintly.)

I will further confess that my kids are allowed to watch a little TV for their own enjoyment. For a long time, I was against this idea – perhaps because it would detract from my own viewing – but mainly because I heeded all the warnings.

That changed when I bought a CD of toddler tunes.

Because they're musically inclined, I thought they'd hear those songs and dance with exuberance. But when I put it on, they looked at the blank TV for the visuals to go along with their audio. Their boogieing was tinged with confusion.

So I decided to turn on the TV but keep the sound down so that they'd have something to look at. But this was also baffling: They'd be hearing about the Pufferbillies all in a row while watching the ladies of The View. Or the song would be about those wheels on the bus, but the pictures were showing toilet paper.

Then I decided it wouldn't be so harmful to get a tape of the Wiggles, an Australian group of grown men who sing and dance and smile a whole lot. Suddenly, my kids could jam out to "Hot Potato" while also picking up new moves from the Wiggles boys.

You may be thinking, "Oh, that's OK. That's not real TV."

Please, hold your nice comments. We also let them watch Blue's Clues . (Now I'm ducking.) They happened to see it one day by accident, and that was all it took. The show is so irresistible to kids that I suspect some type of love potion is at work.

We let them watch it once a day, mainly because I think the show is fairly educational. Call me nuts, but I can't see how Steve and his pal Blue are detrimental to young minds. I've never seen an episode where they trip over a dead body or embark on a car chase while looking for their clues. It's all harmless, sorta-brainy fun.

I think they, unlike their parents, could go a week without TV and not even miss it.

Darla Atlas is a Texas Living copy editor.