My parents used to think I was watching porn while I was actually watching the Disney Channel.

When I was a kid, my parents had one of those black boxes that got all the channels for the TV in their bedroom. Downstairs in the family room, we had basic cable. We got Nickelodeon, which was pretty much all I cared about, until I went to a friend's house and caught a glimpse of the Disney Channel. Cartoons I hadn't heard of, movies I only saw in theatres – this was a gold mine to a little kid.

My mom liked to watch her stories for what passed in child-time as 912,387 hours of every day, and I had my own cartoons to keep up to date on when I wasn't outside playing. So one rainy day I got sick of watching some painted starlet wake up from yet another coma and asked my mom if I could watch TV in their room. “Why, what channel are you going to watch?” she asked, nervously.

“42,” I replied.

“Well, what's 42?” she pressed.

I just said, “Nickelodeon,” not offering anything more than the bare minimum. Why did she always have to know everything about everything?

“OK...but don't go any higher than that!” she cautioned.

Whatever, I thought – cartoons, at last! I walked upstairs and stared down the hallway. My dad had always referred to the whole upstairs as the “private quarters,” and I wasn't allowed to have my friends anywhere near the stairs, let alone in my room. I feel compelled to mention that I grew up in a house – a nice house, sure, but a regular house nonetheless, without “wings” or “quarters” for that matter, so for our dime-a-dozen home in suburbia, it was a little much to refer to four bedrooms, a linen closet, and two bathrooms as anybody's quarters.

My dad also always kept the heat off in the "private quarters" because he couldn't sleep when it was above 50F, so all the rooms were always cold. Despite it being New England, the air conditioner was (and always is) set in the window of my parents' bedroom next to a large, white, oscillating fan and they're both turned on most of the year. I approached the door to their bedroom, and hesitated. That door was always kept shut – always – and I was never allowed in without permission. But I had verbal clearance, and my dad was still at work, so I pushed in. The room was chilly, as usual, and dark. I closed the door behind me because they always wanted it closed. I sat on the edge of their bed and wrapped the foot of their comforter around me as I turned on the TV. I remembered that they got the Disney Channel up there, and wondered again why the house got it upstairs but not downstairs in the family room.

I found the Disney Channel, and a movie about animals had just started – one about real animals that had been dubbed with human voices, jackpot! I watched the rest of the movie and I watched it without commercials – Nickelodeon never had anything cool like that. The movie ended and I picked up the remote to switch to another channel. I went down a few when I heard footsteps down the hall. I kept surfing through the channels when there was a knock at the door. I guessed it was my brother, because my parents wouldn't knock on their own bedroom door. I called out, “come in!” just as I switched to the next channel, which was the Christian network that always broadcasted masses from around the globe. Does anyone besides old people watched that boring stuff, I wondered. My dad opened the door and he looked annoyed: “What are you doing up here?” he asked.

“Mom said I could watch TV,” I said, defensively.

He looked at the TV screen, where a priest was raising the Eucharist and saying a prayer in Latin. “Well, I know you weren't watching that,” and he crossed his arms.

I got up off the bed and turned off the TV. I didn't like it when people went in my room without me, so I figured he was annoyed and I better just leave: “Mom said I could....but I'll go back downstairs.”

He closed the door behind me and I heard the TV being turned back on. They get all the good channels in there anyway.

I went back downstairs. My mom had begun making dinner, and I joined in. When it was ready, she told me to call my father and brother for dinner. I went to the stairs and screamed, “STEVE!!!!”

“Just go upstairs and knock on his door!” my mother instructed me.

I had seen her do it this way a million times, and I wondered why I couldn't. I went up the stairs and the sound of heavy metal grew with each step. I knocked on Steve's door. No response. I pounded my fist on his door, and the heavy metal got even louder when he cracked it open an inch and peeked out through his nest of hair. “Dinner,” I said, and he shut the door in acknowledgment. 

I went to my parents' bedroom and hesitated at the door again. I hoped dad wasn't still annoyed at me. I knocked on the door. No response. The TV was on and it was blaring because my dad is deaf in one ear. I knocked harder. No response. I pounded my fist on the door, and heard permission to enter.

“Dinner's ready,” I said, and turned to leave.

“OK, thanks – hold it! Come here. What were you watching in here today that you don't want me to know about?” he said gently.

“Channel 42,” I said.

“Well what's on channel 42?”

“Nickelodeon.”

“Did you go any higher than 42?” he asked.

The Disney Channel was on 67. But for some reason, I didn't want to tell him that I had watched it. I knew we didn't get that channel on the downstairs TV, and I felt like I had been bad somehow by watching one of the channels that came in on the big bad black box. The black box made my mother angry, so I knew it was bad.

“Yes.” I decided that I wouldn't tell him about the Disney Channel.

“What did you see?”

“I dunno...stuff.” I looked away.

“What you saw was something you're not supposed to see. I don't want you to watch TV in here alone again. Do you understand? Now give me a hug – let's go get some dinner.”

I didn't understand why I wasn't allowed to watch the Disney Channel. I thought maybe he meant I was too young, but I just didn't understand. I guessed maybe he didn't want me to want to go to Disneyland.

TIme passed, and I forgot about the Disney Channel. Years passed, and one weekend when I came home from college, I was flipping through the channels when I came across the Disney Channel – on the TV in the family room. I paused and watched for a moment. I flashed back to the times I used to sneak into my parents' bedroom to watch it, and how upset it made them. Then I had an epiphany: they thought I was watching porn. Then I had another: they used to get the dirty channels.

Ew.

P.S. The black box has been gone for many, many years.