When I was four years old, my parents bought a TV. I remember standing as far away from it as I could and eyeing it askance, unwilling to confront face to face this blockheaded new family member – and it wasn’t even turned on. Yet I think I sensed, even then, that my life had been irrevocably changed.

Unlike most people I know, I remember life before TV. I remember lying in my crib and watching with fascination the darkness, inexplicably glittering with tiny flecks of gold, slowly rolling to flow underneath the bed and up and over me again. Standing under the grape arbor – I must have been about two --I remember looking up at a goat with alien amber eyes and curling horns with which it promptly knocked me flat. Starting about age three, I remember reaching above my head to collect warm eggs from the chicken nests, occupants of which would sometimes peck my hands. I took a mental note: I was four years old the first time my mother let me go trotting all by myself down the rutted dirt lane to the woods and fields where the wild things were.

And they roared their terrible roars. . .no, not really. They were mostly rabbits. But my point is, I was unafraid. Not brave, exactly, but innocent, open.

The TV remained blank-faced and mute in the living room during the days. But when my father came home from work, and after supper, we would all gather in front of it and he, paterfamilias, would turn it on.

I don’t remember what we watched or how I reacted the first time this happened, but I remember the accumulated pain of many such evenings, and it amounted to a feeling of being mentally and emotionally violated, forced, almost raped, as sounds and images were jammed willy-nilly into me. I had no control and no free will and I couldn’t go to where the wild things were. Instead, wild things, the wrong kind of wild things, came to me, men punching and hitting each other and blood on their faces and shooting each other and wincing me with the noises of gunfire and shouting and images ramming into my eyes like shards of glass. Don’t blame my parents; I doubt that I gave any sign I was suffering. Somehow, perhaps due to my British father, very early in life I adopted a Spartan ethic. Wolves gnawing my vitals could not make me cry. Nor could TV. But inwardly it agonized and sickened me.

What were we watching? Disney, mostly, and I don’t mean cartoons. Hasn’t anybody besides me ever noticed how violent Disney TV was, although God forbid they should show any kissing? Also we watched Maverick – I had to love James Garner – and Bonanza. Michael Landon as Little Joe on his pinto horse; yes, I had a crush on him. But at the same time and always and forever somebody would get beaten up in a fight, or the bogeymen of the time, Indians, would charge in with chilling war cries, and bang bang that awful sound somebody would shoot somebody down, and I could just barely stand it.

I was scared sick of TV “Indians” and scalping, but the very worst thing was whips. Another awful sound. Somebody was always going to horsewhip somebody. The words alone made me queasy. But it wasn’t just violence that traumatized me. It was heartbreak, tears, drama that overwhelmed me. Even the bloodless cartoons were bad. Bambi and the forest fire, or what happened to Dumbo and his mother. . . I wouldn’t cry, would not cry, but I would sweat, and cringe, and sometimes make an excuse to flee the room.

One would think I’d grow out of my sensitivity in time, but I didn’t. Perhaps because I had not watched people being tortured and/or murdered on TV since infancy, I continued to be upset by TV into adulthood, and indeed until the present day. My life became very hard when TV spread like influenza into department stores, restaurants, waiting rooms in doctors’ offices, even the auto repair shop, and I could seldom raise my eyes in a public place without encountering a TV set confronting me with the news, a basketball game, Wheel of Fortune or whatever. Even though I was not usually forced to witness slaughter on these occasions, I still found TV unsettling because its flickering and random action would not allow me to reclaim my selfhood and turn my attention to enjoying my life. Real life.

In real life, I’m a lot less squeamish than some of my friends. I’m not afraid of darkness or thunderstorms or loud noises, or of guns as long as they’re pointed away from me. I’ll even shoot at a target occasionally. Moreover, spiders, mice, worms, bloody accidents, medical procedures and the like don’t faze me. I’ve tried to breathe life into a dying man with strings of saliva cobwebbing his mouth. I’ve let a boa constrictor slither up my sleeve and around my shoulders. I’ve watched giant slugs hang from their own slime to mate. I’ve dated a man with half a head. I’ve picked up a rattlesnake on a shovel to escort it off my porch. I’ve attended dozens of science fiction conferences. What more can I say? I can be weird, but I’m not a wuss.

I’m even brave enough to watch TV or a movie with friends or family when they insist. If they see me trembling, they sympathize but don’t understand. “Nancy, it’s just a story! It’s not real! Those people are just actors!” they tell me, helping not at all. Or, if the show turns out to be one that wins my heart rather than curdling my intestines, they say, “There, that was nice, wasn’t it?” And I want to scream: no, no, it wasn’t nice. It was sublime, and I will remember it until the end of time! Or at least the rest of my life (realistically this is true), whereas they will have turned away and forgotten about it within a few minutes, because they consider it was just a story. Just a story? Nothing means more to me than story! Why the heck do these people think I’m a novelist?

Yes, I’m sure there’s a connection between my fiction-writing career and my TV viewing or lack thereof. I love story. I love apple pie, too, but don’t go force-feeding it to me or shoving it into my face.

I guess I need control. Finesse. Story unsullied by commercials for hemorrhoid cream or white teeth or yogurt or pickup trucks. Story that bespeaks truth, doesn’t cheat and doesn’t have to be compressed into a time slot. I guess I need to read story, so I can pause and reflect, or else story has to come out of me.

Do I ever watch TV nowadays? Yes, I’ve gotten a little bit more Zen about it. I fell hard for “Perception” and “The Mentalist,” although the scripts are not without their story logic faults. And I seldom miss an emergency room show or a true-crime documentary. My husband is appalled by my interest in trauma, assault, missing persons and murder. “How can you watch that stuff, but not a John Wayne movie?”

I have to smile. “Because nobody’s trying to tell me it’s just a story. It's real, and everybody knows it’s real, so I can deal with it.”