I was about six years old and the national preoccupation, at least in early broadcast circles, seemed to be smoking in bed, which, judging by what I saw and heard, constituted a threat, not only to Western Civilization, but to Life on Earth As We Know It. All of those "public service announcements" (or PSAs as they're called today) must have solved the problem—everybody must have stopped smoking in bed—since you don't see or hear spots about it any more.

Or maybe it was even earlier than that, in Denver when I was about four, lying in my crib, listening to The FBI in Peace and War, which took time to admonish me, at the end of every program, to "drink plenty of beverages". I didn't have a clue what "beverages" was, but even then, it was clear that if the anal-retentive sado-masochistic fascists in Our government (who claimed to be protecting us from the anal-retentive sado-masochistic fascists in Their government) asked me to do something, it almost certainly wouldn't be good for me.

More to the point, it made me feel pushed around, and I didn't like it a bit. I've always been nag-resistant (my mother says the first word I uttered was "No!"), a sensation I experience at the visceral, rather than the cerebral level.