True Crime, that is.

The last sitcoms I watched with regularity were Home Improvement and Married with Children (back when the content of the latter was considered “daring” television entertainment.)

This dates my television viewing days to the early ‘90s. I didn’t swear off television. I wasn’t making a statement. Perhaps my fading fascination with the boob tube had more to do with raising young children during the Barney era. The large, purple androgynous dancing dinosaur annoyed me into permanently misplacing the remote control – for a decade.

I have never seen “Reality TV.” I don’t care what people dropped off on remote islands are doing. I think it’s insane anyone has won a cash prize for eating pig snouts and leeches (where exactly does that fit on a resume, anyway?). Is anyone truly surprised by what happens when “seven perfect” (young, attractive, college-drop-out) “strangers” move into a house together and “start getting real?” Hint: they start getting real drunk and, later, they start having sex. Sorry for the spoiler.

One can only hope our satellite images are not being intercepted by space aliens conducting a study of life on Earth. Or maybe reality teevee is life on Earth. If so, don’t be surprised when those aliens hand us a bucket of pig snouts and pitcher of kamikazes as an intergalactic olive branch.

We do have television in our home. We have television because America has football and I live with a football fan. We have a television because Disney and Discovery are, sometimes, the answer to “Mo-oooo-o-oo-m, I’m BORED.” But, until a year ago, I resisted.

In preparation for my recovery from ACL reconstruction, I stocked my bedside with books, my laptop and art supplies. I planned to catch up on writing, re-discover my flare for drawing and study philosophy, economics and psychology. Thrown in for entertainment were some true crime and thriller books and a few DVDs.

Then, it happened. Painkillers made me cross-eyed, so reading, writing and drawing quickly fell off the to-do list. I watched all the DVDs during the first two days of recovery. So, one morning, I gimped into the living room, grabbed the remote control and (gasp!) channel surfed.

If prime-time reality TV somehow tickles the psyche of the average American, satellite TV must have been designed for the average American adoptee. Perhaps we are all touched with a bit of Adopted Child Syndrome. Those of us who don’t pick up a knife or flamethrower, can pick up our remotes and live vicariously via the world of the macabre beamed down from satellite into the comfort of our living rooms.

It’s all there, between channels 220 and 300: serial killers, homicide detectives, love triangles, forensic labs, bounty hunters, medical examiners and the world of abnormal psychology.

I can no longer proclaim myself a television snob. I now own my own Universal Remote. I have even been known to waltz into the living room, armed with my remote and zap off Disney saying “Sorry, but it’s time for Cold Case Files.” The only thing slowing me down is football season – but I’m working on that.

For the reader questioning my pathological makeup: Don’t worry.

I can quit any time.

I can.

Really.