While watching TV, let’s hear it for closed captions

Own up. You’re into closed captions.

What we used to call “subtitles” now are only a click away on the TV remote and can be enjoyed among consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes. Presumably, this is not the sort of information being collected in mega-data sweeps, but then you never know.

For one, I would confess to my captioning habit long before harsh interrogation began.

Yes, during “Homeland.” Yes, when watching Colbert. Yes, all right, sometimes even while reviewing the news on CNN. Yes, yes, yes.

Pressed, I also would admit to punching up subtitles for British police procedurals — “Happy Valley,” “Hinterland,” “Luther,” “Broadchurch,” “Vera,” reruns of “Prime Suspect,” the whole glorious bunch — because I don’t care what language is intended, these people are not speaking English as we usually know it.

More than an accent, Brit-speak is secret code. How can I possibly be expected to solve the crime if I cannot understand a word of the detective chief inspector?

We’ve been watching “The Crown” on Netflix. It’s about the life and times of Queen Elizabeth. Without closed captioning, I might have thought Liz ruled Liechtenstein. Even simple lines like, “How many dresses are there?” come across as some sort of CIA scramble.

As kids, if someone mentioned a movie and said, “Yeah, but it’s got subtitles,” that was that. We would be playing stickball and not going to what, in the neighborhood, we called the “show.” A film with subtitles was the cinematic equivalent of, “Dinner? Yeah, but it’s smelts.”

Subtitles meant the “show” was foreign — something fancy from France, most likely, and not starring Marilyn Monroe or Kim Novak. Besides, there was sure to be Deep Meaning floating around somewhere to make you feel dumb if you didn’t get it. Weren’t movies supposed to be fun?

For me, a kind of breakthrough came in 1955 with “Diabolique.” Yes, the film was French, but there was a spooky boarding school, a twisted murder plot, a gorgeous victim named Christina in a low-cut nightgown and an unforgettable bathtub scene that kept us shivering into early adulthood. Subtitles, sure, but one had to make exceptions.

Then came “Rififi,” a terrific French jewelry heist flick and, a few years later, Ingmar Bergman’s “Virgin Spring.” Bergman’s film was brilliant but bleak — barbarity, vengeance, purification rites out in the woods of medieval Sweden. Several Stockholm moviegoers left the theater weeping when the film was released, according to reports. And the Swedes didn’t have to deal with subtitles.

But, slowly, aversion to foreign films was fading. One heart-pounding discovery clinched the deal: Sophia Loren. Subtitles? Who cared? Wow.

“Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” “Marriage Italian Style,” “The Priest’s Wife” — all those good-hearted and slightly steamy Italian movies where a young fellow, no matter height, weight or charisma deficit, might dream of being Marcello Mastroianni, Loren’s love interest, if only until the final credits crossed the screen.

Let’s be honest, though, subtitles at this point in life have less to do with the daunting challenges of a Francois Truffaut film, or glottal stops of actor David Tennant’s Scottish accent in “Broadchurch.” Likewise, no one is putting captions over Wolf Blitzer’s right shoulder on CNN just for atmospherics.

Nope. Mainly, this has to do with hearing.

And, OK, I’m the first to admit that I’m not exactly the radar-tracking station I once was when it comes to picking up distant signals, but occasional remarks by family members that I am becoming the Mister Magoo of audiology are outrageously overstated.

Oh, all right, it is true that, recently, I had to ask a diner waitress three times to say “split pea soup,” and, yes, I once did mistake the words, “I can’t” for “eggplant.”

In general, though, I do fine.

When, occasionally, someone sends a text, I can hear the iPhone ping from the next room. Furthermore, I am keenly aware of the tea kettle whistling on the range when downstairs making the bed in the morning. Traveling the LIE, I can hear the impatient beep of the guy in back who wants me to break the sound barrier.

But, at night, a little groggy and in front of the TV, I need some backup. Sure, I can hear Blitzer announce more “breaking news” and when “Homeland” superagent Carrie Mathison warns of treachery, I go to red alert.

Some lines are lost, though, I’m not kidding myself.

“What’d she say?” I ask my wife, Wink.

“Got me,” says Wink.

We look at each other and nod. No one’s looking. Time for a little “CC.”