By LORI WELBOURNE

Watching television was an extremely restricted activity in my house growing up, and for that reason, I couldn’t get enough of it.

My little brother and I weren’t allowed to watch it all the time like our lucky-duck friends were. And, as a double whammy on the meter of unfairness in our lives, our mom and dad were much younger than the parents of our pals, yet they were stricter than all of them.

In grade five, I started babysitting my 7-year-old brother in the afternoons when our folks were still at work. Our mom instructed us to do homework after school, and once we finished we could read a book or play a board game. Under no circumstances were we to turn on the “boob tube” that would rot our brains.

But reruns of groovy shows like “The Brady Bunch” and “Bewitched” were on at that time, so there was no possible way we could adhere to such an unreasonable rule when left alone like that.

With 12 glorious channels to choose from, there was always something exciting to see on our old black and white, and every day we’d watch it for as long as we could.

An hour or so later, when we heard a car pull into the driveway, we’d quickly run up to the telly, turn the knob to the dreaded “off” position, run back to the couch and crack open our books before our mom or dad even opened the front door.

If our father was the first to arrive home he would sometimes touch the top of the TV as he walked by it. Jeremie and I would hold our breath and look at each other nervously, praying he wouldn’t notice its warmth. He never did.  Years later we found out that he knew exactly what we were up to, he just didn’t mind.

I now have that same attitude about the television with my own kids, and I allow them to watch it. Within reason.

Sam and Daisy are like my brother and I were. If they had their choice, they’d start their day with the TV on and that thing wouldn’t be turned off until they fell asleep in front of it, well past midnight.

“We cancelled cable the day we became parents,” an acquaintance told me last week. “Children who grow up ‘watchers’ do not become ‘doers’.”

I wonder if there are statistics to prove that. Probably. There are studies and statistics that can prove just about anything.

All I know is that I don’t believe the TV will render us useless. I was obsessed with it as a kid, but I’ve seen very little of it as an adult since I’m always too busy doing something else.

Yet, despite my lack of tube time, my fascination with pop culture persists. I can thank the Internet for that.

Surfing the web makes it easy to keep up with what’s going on in TV land without having to actually watch it.

If I want to find out who Honey Boo Boo is, I don’t need to look for her show the old-fashioned way and watch the darn thing. All I have to do is Google her name and up pop videos — with subtitles — that show me in a matter of minutes.

“I would never have cablevision,” a young friend told me last week. Oh, boy, I thought, bracing myself for more judgment.

“Why would I?” he then asked. “I can get anything I want from Netflix and YouTube.”

Good idea. I should look up “The Brady Bunch” and “Bewitched” to show my lucky-duck kids. Now, that really would be groovy.

— Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com