Thirty years ago this month, something momentous happened in my life. I had a stroke of luck which would help define me up until this day.

I got strep throat. More specifically, I got sent home from school with strep throat the same day that cable television was installed in our house.

Talk about good luck.

I remember spending the better part of a week in my parent’s bedroom exploring all the wonderful new channels we received. Of course, I was blown away by getting 25 or 30 channels back then, a figure I find wholly un-American in this day and age.

The reason I can connect these things together is because ESPN started broadcasting on Sept. 7, 1979. I think that was the day that I came home sick, although I don’t think I could ever figure that out for sure.

The network celebrated its 30^th anniversary a couple of weeks ago. As I watched video from the first-ever episode of SportsCenter, I wondered if my 11-year-old self was watching at that exact moment.

If I was, I probably thought the strep had killed me and sent me to heaven. A whole channel with nothing but sports? Back then, that seemed implausible.

Those were the days when you had to wait until the afternoon newspaper – Baltimore had two of them at that time – to find out the details from the Orioles game the night before. Of course, wanting to find out the details of the Orioles game sounds pretty implausible too, but they were really good back then. Honest.

So I spent that week in utter joy, watching whatever I could find. If we hadn’t had cable, I never would have seen Star Wars because the movie didn’t interest me one bit when it came out in the theaters. But HBO showed the stinking thing over and over again, and I knew the thing by heart eventually.

This even pre-dated MTV. I remember when that came around and finally completed the circle. News, sports and music. You could find it all.

That’s what I love about television. You never know what you might find as long as you flip around the channels enough times. Bruce Springsteen lied when he said there were 57 channels with nothing on.

We now have channels devoted solely to individual sports. I can watch tennis, soccer, golf, auto racing, baseball, basketball or football. I can watch only college sports if I want to.

And if I’m not in the mood for sports, I have movie channels and historical channels and channels for every specific interest you can imagine. Sure, I don’t watch a lot of them, but I have them if I want them. I love the variety.

I think that’s what I loved so much about that first week of flipping through the channels in my parent’s bedroom. I didn’t have to settle for whatever might be on the networks or the two independent stations we could get on the rabbit ears. I had options.

I just wish I had the time to enjoy it all again. If I get lucky, maybe I’ll get strep throat again.