The Aquatic Channel

If you visit our house, you'll enter the front door to a familiar blue glow in the corner of the living room. You'll do a double take, realizing that the source is no longer the TV, but rather a fish tank inhabited by a mermaid, a Grecian urn, a pirate's treasure chest, and 8 tropical fish. The Aquatic Channel, 24/7.

Granted, I was raised to hold a skeptical view of television. Taped to my mother's TV was the quote: "Television is called a medium because it is neither rare nor well-done." Summer days swimming in my grandparents' lake were punctuated by the daily argument between my father and sister, who left the dock at 3pm sharp to watch "General Hospital." These things made an impression.

But I also loved television. I loved Sesame Street, Zoom, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, Charlie's Angels, The Brady Bunch, Eight Is Enough, 3-2-1 Contact. In middle school, I watched for hours "with" my best friend Anna (on the phone). I later worked for PBS where I promoted television as an instructional tool in the classroom; then I went to film school. I am not reflexively anti-TV. As a parent, I try to teach my kids how to moderate their viewing rather than pretending TV doesn't exist. I hope they will become discerning viewers, choosing quality over quantity, yadayada...

So it turns out that we have Scooby Doo to blame, first for the decision to cancel cable, then to remove the TV all together. It started innocently enough. Our oldest son discovered Scooby around the age of 4, and from that point on, he had no interest in Sesame Street, Max & Ruby, or any other sweet little developmentally appropriate program with a smidge of instructional value. His younger brother, age 2 at the time, hadn't a clue which witch was which, but he loved the dog and the bright colors and the groovy tunes. I was worried it might be scary, but Duncan assured me, "Mom, the whole point of Scooby Doo is that the ghosts are never real, so we don't need to be scared of them!" I figured if he could grasp that essential Scooby truth already, then an episode a day wouldn't hurt them, and it allowed me to get dinner made earlier, which made bedtime earlier, which was all good-

Until we all became addicts. The two boys had their favorite episodes and so -- a curse upon On-Demand TV -- a daily battle ensued ("taking turns" was beyond the rational capacity of the two-year old). I had come to depend on it to keep them engaged so I could return a phone call, make dinner, sit down for a moment... When my On-Demanding offspring got too wild, I had a powerful lever: no TV today, but of course that was a punishment to me as much as them (picture little heroin addicts in withdrawal). Their loving grandparents, eager to please, bought several feature-length Scooby DVDs to watch at their house. Now, rather than jumping out of the car to play in the beautiful outdoors of New Hampshire, our kids would race to Nana & Poppa's TV for "Scooby Doo and the Legend of the Vampire."

We hit rock bottom mid-summer when Duncan spent an entire night awake, seeing Scooby ghosts in every shadow. This despite his insight two years earlier. That was it.

The recovery came in steps. First, we stayed in NH without TV for several weeks, fishing, going to the library, building a treehouse with Grampy, etc. Then, upon our return to Brooklyn, we cut the cable. Without On-Demand, there was nothing to demand. TV became a family event reserved for a Saturday night movie and a few DVD episodes on Sunday morning. No TV at all during the school week. And then, the final step, Jordy hauled the TV to the basement and we bought the Fish Tank.

It turns out that the Aquatic Channel provides a great variety of viewing pleasures. The first was a procedural drama, call it "CSI-Fish Tank." We started with just 4 fish; after a few days, one of the little Neon Tetras went missing. No body floating belly-up. No body stuck in the filter, attempting escape like Nemo. We spent days searching, reviewing evidence, developing theories. We drew the grisly conclusion that he was cannibalized. The Aquatic Channel took a turn toward the soap operatic as the black Molly, who schooled intimately with the orange Molly, developed a life-threatening fungus around its eye. We had hoped for babies, but alas, the Molly lovers were ripped apart by nature and fate (and perhaps lame fish-tank maintenance). We found the black one belly up inside the Grecian urn. (It is now stiff in a sandwich bag in the freezer, awaiting spring for burial in the back yard.) After the water quality stabilized, we bought 6 more fish including a very aggressive and large Angel fish. At this point, the Aquatic Channel took a turn toward Reality, a la "Survivor." We watched for days, expecting to find the meeker fish pecked to death by the Angel fish. To our surprise, all eight have now survived two full weeks.

But the real dramatic development is happening outside the tank. What the fish see on the Human Channel is two boys and a baby coming home from school. They kick off their boots and dig into the toy chest for puzzles, or markers, or Play-Dough, or new books from the library. They entertain themselves for the hour, sometimes two, their mom needs to feed the Baby and Dog, return phone calls, and make dinner. Not a very exciting channel, but an evolutionary improvement upon our past.

Now, about Angry Birds...