JEFF'S LIFE
 by Jeff Stimpson

Viewer's Choice

Last night I had Ned on my knee while Jill spooned Gerber's pears into his mouth. It was a tough feeding because his head was turned. His head was turned because his eyes were fixed on the TV set. "Look at him. Look at him," Jill said.

Ned was transfixed on a football game, a preseason blowout between the Giants and the Jaguars. He stared as New York moved downfield with what Ned seemed to think was the best combo of pass and run he'd seen in his eight months of life. He watched New York turn a fourth and four into a smooth touchdown, and smiled and tried to clap.

"Ned will watch football because you watch it," Jill said to me. "He'll learn about it from you and he'll be interested in it because of you." Poppycock, I thought, though Ned might have watched because it was the second week of preseason and the starters played most of the first half.

This morning Jill called and said, "You remember last night when Ned couldn't take his eyes off the TV when there was a football game on?"

Yes?

"The TV's on now, and he's not watching."

Really? What's on?

"'Martha Stewart,'" Jill said. Amazing that she got the tube long enough to watch Martha, with Alex hogging it for Elmo and Mother Goose.

"Ned is going cold turkey off television when Alex goes to school," Jill said.

I have several observations about this:

-Cold turkey never works, except it might work for me if I stopping watching Martha. Martha is duller programming than pro golf.

-Ned cannot become a Giants fan. As his clapping set in, I turned him away from the TV fast and screeched "Nooooo!" into his face, which made him smile wider. Actually, speaking as a Redskins fan who grew up with a father who watched the Raiders and an older brother who watched the Cowboys, I know that the quickest way to turn Ned off the Giants is to pretend to watch them myself.

-They say that when he was just two years old, the famous Dallas running back Emmitt Smith glued his eyes to the set whenever a football game was on. He seemed to drink in every detail. They also say that Emmitt Smith, a multi-millionaire now, is extremely generous to his parents.

-Ned got hooked on TV by watching Alex. Alex will sit on his rocking horse and digest whole videos of Elmo and Mother Goose. Last night Alex dragged his booster seat in front of the set to have dinner while he caught the end of Sesame Street's "Peter and the Wolf." "Alex, you want fries?" I'd ask, holding one up. He just turned his neck to look beyond my hand, to miss not a minute of how Elmo became the village hero. (I never wanted to be a parent for whom the TV was a babysitter, but, dammit, I'm tired.)

On what I'm coming to see is an alarming number of occasions when Alex watches TV, Ned is on the blanket in the background. He's usually smiling at the screen. He looks away during commercials. If Jill or I bend down to give him a hug or a smooch, Ned will act like some guys embracing their loved ones on Thanksgiving: He cranes his head around the obscuring loved one and keeps his eyes on the screen.

I used to do that, too. TV was a big thing all through my childhood. We had an old Magnavox with rabbit ears and a twist-knob channel selector. When the picture would get all jumpy, my mother would whack the knob claiming that it "got the dust out of it." She also wrapped tinfoil around the tip of the antenna, claiming that this brought in Channel 7 better. "Oh, they're a lousy station!" I can still hear her saying. The cleverest thing I said in my first five years came out when my mother stepped in front of the screen during a crucial moment of "Combat." "You're a better door than window, mum!" I said. (Before you label me a snotty little kid and say that we'd better get Ned away from the set before he learns to speak, you should know that I stole that line from my big brother. I presume he stole it from someone, too, probably my father during a Raiders game.) TV can bring families together.

I'm sure Ned would agree. Jill will nevertheless make good on her cold-turkey threat, within limits. "When Alex goes to school," she said, "then I'll watch Martha."

©2001 Jeff Stimpson

MENSIGHT Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at http://www .jeffslife.com