Hi, I'm Doug. I'm 38 years old, I live in the suburbs with my wife and two kids, I sell commercial insurance, and none of that is why you're here. You're here because you were seven years old once, and it was Saturday, and nobody else in the house was up yet.

I built this page after a conversation at work where I said "Land of the Lost" and a guy my age got a look on his face like I'd handed him back something he lost in 1975. Half the office was in on it inside of ten minutes. Turns out everybody who grew up in the seventies has the same three hours filed away somewhere, and it doesn't take much to get them out. So this is my filing cabinet. Come on in and pull up a TV tray.

You wake up and it's still a little dark, and there is no alarm clock, because you don't need one on Saturday. You know. Your body knows. You get up and you don't get dressed, because pajamas are Saturday clothes, and you go down the stairs on the side that doesn't creak, because if Dad wakes up it's going to turn into a whole thing about the yard.

The TV is a big wooden piece of furniture in the corner, and you turn the knob and it hums, and then the picture swims up out of the gray. It's on the wrong channel, always, so you get up and turn the dial — clunk, clunk, clunk — and adjust the rabbit ears, and you sit down on the floor. Not the couch. The floor, about three feet from the screen, which is closer than Mom allows, but Mom is asleep.

Then the bowl. You have to get the bowl and the cereal and the milk yourself, and pour it yourself, and carry it back to your spot on the floor without spilling, and you are the most careful you will be all week. The cereal is one of the good ones with a cartoon character on the box, the ones that turn the milk a color. You eat the whole bowl and drink the milk and then you're allowed a second bowl because it's Saturday and nobody is counting.

And then it's just you and the TV for three hours. Cartoons, then more cartoons, then the little ones where a bill sits on Capitol Hill and sings about it, and you learned the preamble to the Constitution from a cartoon and you still can't say it without singing it. Scooby-Doo, and the gang, and it's always the caretaker. The Super Friends, where nobody ever got hurt and there was always a lesson. Land of the Lost, which was a live-action show with dinosaurs and those lizard men that scared you so badly you watched from behind the couch, and which you would not miss for anything. Bugs Bunny, who was older than your dad and funnier than anybody.

And between all of it, the commercials, which I honestly remember as well as the shows. Toys you had to have. A race car set with a loop that never worked as well at your house as it did on TV. Action figures with a grip. A doll that did something. Cereal, more cereal. A board game where everybody was screaming with joy. And you sat there in front of that furniture-sized TV and you wanted every single thing they showed you, and at ten o'clock Mom came down and said turn that off and go outside, and you did, because you'd had your three hours, and that was enough.

Then next Saturday you did it all again. For about six years. And I wouldn't trade it.

In no particular order, and I'm sure I'm forgetting half of it. Feel free to remind me.

Cereal I would have fought you over: anything with a prize in the box. Anything that came with a cutout on the back. I will not name brands because my wife says I'll get in trouble, but if you were there, you know, and if you were there you also know the one that cut the roof of your mouth and you ate it anyway.

I have two, nine and six. And here's the thing: they watch cartoons too, but it's not the same, and I've been trying to figure out why.

Part of it is that cartoons are on all the time now. There's a whole cable channel of them. There are cartoons on after school, before school, at nine o'clock at night. When something's on all the time it isn't special. We had three hours a week and that was IT, and if you missed it, it was gone until they reran it next summer. My kids have never once had to wait a week for anything. They have a VCR full of tapes. They can rewind. Rewind! We would have killed for a rewind.

Part of it is that they don't get up early for it. The nine-year-old sleeps in on Saturday. Sleeps in! At nine! I could not have been paid to sleep in on a Saturday at nine. There was too much at stake.

And part of it is that I'm the dad now. I'm the one who comes down at ten and says turn that off and go outside. I hear myself say it and I think, that's my father's voice, exactly. He was right, by the way. Go outside.

But I'll tell you what. Last month I got up early one Saturday, and the six-year-old was already down there, on the floor, in her pajamas, three feet from the screen, with a bowl. And the cartoon was one of those Pokemon ones that I do not understand at all, and she was lost in it completely. And I didn't say anything. I got a bowl of cereal and I sat down on the floor next to her. And she let me. So there's hope.

I don't know how to make a form that actually does anything, so this is the old-fashioned way. Copy the questions into an e-mail, answer them, and send it to me. I'll add up the answers and post the results here in October. So far I've gotten 41 replies, which is 40 more than I expected. Keep 'em coming.

1. What year were you born?
2. What was the ONE show you would not miss? (Just one. I know.)
3. Cereal: with the prize inside, or the one that tasted best? Name it if you dare.
4. Floor or couch?
5. Did your family have a TV tray? What was on it?
6. What was the toy from a Saturday morning commercial that you wanted most, and did you get it?
7. Who made you turn it off, and at what time?
8. Do your kids (if you've got 'em) watch Saturday morning cartoons? Same, or different?
9. Bonus: what's the thing you remember that nobody else seems to? I've already gotten three people who remember the same cereal commercial that I thought I'd dreamed.

Early results: Scooby-Doo is winning question 2 by a mile. Floor is beating couch about 3 to 1. And every single person has a TV tray story. Every one.