The origins of my television obsession

My friend K. sent me an article on how Sex and the City inspired a young women to live the wild Sex and the City lifestyle - when she was 14 years old. I'm not shocked. But I was a little jealous because when I was 14 I didn't even have a risqué show to emulate and regret in my old age. I grew up on a farm. We had chickens and horses, and a television that had about three channels. THREE. And two of those you couldn't watch if the wind kicked up. At the age of ten, my dad would have me stand outside and turn the antenna so the channel he got his local wrestling on wouldn't be full of static.
We did not get MTV, Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and definitely not HBO. When I would go over to stay at friends houses, all I wanted to do was watch TV all day. Their mothers would find me planted in front of the TV in the family room, desperately clutching the remote, while my friend would be outside trying to play kickball alone. And then they would get in trouble for not entertaining the friend they had invited over. My mother was not impressed with TV, but when I was 17 years old, someone alerted her to the fact that there was something called Nick at Nite, which showed old episodes of I Love Lucy almost every evening. SOLD. The Primestar (early models of Dish Network) installation man was at our door immediately, and we had one of the very first small satellite dishes in our neighborhood. (We were also the first people in our little burg that had cellphones. I rocked a bad phone in my very first car, but I digress). It was like someone opened up the Pop Culture flood gates. All of a sudden I had HBO, Cinemax, The Movie Channel, Starz, MTV, Lifetime, VH1 and a million other channels I had never seen before. My mother would wake in the middle of the night to find me still awake at 4 a.m. watching the TBS version of Heathers.
The problem with the set up was there was a cable running from the main line directly into my parents room. So whatever I was watching, they were watching it too. I could only to change the channel from Nick at Nite after they went to sleep. So if I changed it a little too soon, a half asleep woman would cry out from her bedroom, "Put it back on Lucy." Most of the time Lucy wasn't even on, but Nick at Night was called the Lucy channel the whole time I was in high school and college.
So many nights, before I would change the channel, I would creep into my parents bedroom and turn off the TV. I would have to be incredibly stealthy, because if my mom woke up, my plot was foiled. But once I got them to sleep, I could watch what I really wanted to - Cinemax. That was my sexual influence as a teenager. At least the S&TC girl had a funny half hour comedy about women on top. My big influence - Emmanuel the series.
But, alas, it was only to last a few months. My mom turned off all the movie channels, not because she caught me watching tawdry movies, but because I only wanted to watch stand-up comedians. She said she didn't understand what they were talking about. "I could be watching Lucy."
The publishers of Mommie Dearest are contacting me right this very second for the book rights of this horrific tale.