The Great Decoder Wars

I was most likely sent on an errand to a neighbour's house when I really saw a satellite TV in use in their house. I was amazed by the infinite films and cartoon shows it could show without a DVD player. The first show I saw, Ben 10, would eventually become one of my favourites years later. I instantly desired satellite TV, but that wouldn't happen for years.

DSTV. That's what the satellite TV was called. And I was probably seven years old at that time. I ever since always longed to visit his house and hopefully stay over sometimes to enjoy cartoon shows from channels like Cartoon Network Boomerang, Disney Jr, and KidsCo. Although this friend, my brother, and I—all three of us—bonded together over some other things, DSTV just seemed magical to my brother and me.

Everywhere we went that had DSTV, I would hardly sleep the night just so I could watch as many shows as I could until God-knows-when again. But about three years later, we were able to own a DSTV setup. And that was the beginning of many of my childhood experiences with cartoons and films. But with a solution came a new problem.

"This is the best day of my life." I most likely said when the DSTV installation started. And when it was turned on, man, I made a new best friend. I hardly ever slept well as a kid back then when I only had local TV stations to watch, and it got worse when DSTV came.

I can't begin to think of the shows I watched and loved on that DSTV, but many of them made me really happy to have a child. I wasn't a sad kid, though. I was rather outspoken, full of energy, and even very inquisitive. It's just that, with cartoons and all those shows on DSTV and also my PS2 console, I was in a completely different world, exposed to fascinating things that made me forget my homework from school.

So when the bell rang for closing time at school, I would race my way back home to be reunited again with my love and enjoy all the shows and forget to iron my clothes for the next day. The problem - my elders at home would be watching something else that I found really boring. Then there were two camps at home.

At camp Cartoon Network, we the kids just wanted to watch cartoons. At camp African Magic Yoruba, they only wanted to watch people tue red and black cloth at night and speaking incantations. And there was only one DSTV decoder. We were at war.

Camp AMY would have been enjoying their lives with the DSTV all day. At least, Camp CN members would have been at school since 7:30 AM, only to return at 4 PM. Hardly would they hand over the staff to us to wield the power of the DSTV. To win this war, we had to devise a new and formidable strategy.

So you see, only one person in the house knew the insides, outsides, and everything in between of the DSTV. If the DSTV doesn't work, this person most likely could fix it. Therefore, if this person could sabotage the DSTV, he would have the upper hand at the war. Ladies and gentlemen, that person was me, of course. And so did I execute my master plan.

I had different tricks up my sleeves. One of them was to disconnect the decoder from the dish outside. The end outside at the dish was where to go. And the dish outside wasn't too far from my reach.

Since the DSTV would remain the way I left it before leaving home, chances are there would be no warrior from Camp AMY to fight with. As planned, I would then "fix" things and quickly change the channel from 157 (African Magic Yoruba) to 301 (Cartoon Network). And then cross my legs, feeling like Elon Musk.

Of course, I would spend the entire day watching cartoon shows and not do my homework. I was already used to the 10 strokes of cane from the Mother. No worries, we go again tonight with some premium tears.

Looking back at those times, I just laugh. Each time I was caught, I found a new way to win the war. The me now would whoop the hell out of the me then for such a cunning stunt.