Jody, a sixth grade boy, lives in a present when he tries to make his worries disappear with the TV remote. Since the family has moved back to the Wisconsin town where his Dad grew up, Jody's had worries: about making friends, about his Dad working to hard, about his parents' thinking he spends too much time in front of the TV. His Dad claims he had a perfect childhood with no TV. While getting his Dad to play a game of Hide and seek, Jody hides in the old TV in Grandma Anderson's basement and is zapped back to his Dad's childhood, where he becomes friends with a kid who turns out to be his own Dad. But fascinating as that is, Jody needs to find his way back to his own time, in time!