saying goodbye to old friends

first off, no laughing.  but, i openly admit that i love soap operas.  it is truly one of things i look forward to on my workdays from home.  at 11am, i turn on the tv for "the young & the restless." at noon, i flip it abc for three glorious hours of "all my children", "one life to live", and "general hospital."  i used to watch "days of our lives as well," but when marlena became possessed, i just couldn't take it anymore.  i mean, come on, we all know that couldn't really happen.  especially in a town named "salem."

now, before you judge me even more, i don't sit and stare at the tv.  i do my work and listen to it.  i mean, i do look up whenever nikolas or jax or sonny appear on gh, but who wouldn't.

me & my mamaw are on the right (my mom and sister on the left)

i have seen characters on these shows evolve for 35 years.  i guess actually 36 since that is how old i am.  my mamaw would have the shows on when she babysat me, and whenever i was home sick from school, she'd let me watch then too. 

the summer of my sixth grade year, i discovered that i could actually watch the shows independently, and i was hooked.  if i remember correctly, that was the summer that cricket and nina on y&r were tricked into a baby-selling scheme, and nina's baby was stolen and sold.  oh it was devastating.

in high school, i was super excited because we got out of school at 2:27pm, and if i drove fast enough, i could get home for the last 15 minutes of general hospital.  let me just say - i didn't waste any time hanging out at my locker after school. 

when i left for college at MU, i was ecstatic because i could plan my schedule around my shows.  i forced my roomate, christine, to fall in love with general hospital.  she was able to understand why i loved frisco and felicia so much, and her heart broke too when tony & bobby agreed to let maxie have bj's heart when she unexpectedly died.  oh it was gut wrenching to watch tony lying on bj in the o.r. after she'd died.  we sobbed.

the sobs of our freshman year were nothing compared to the shrieks of our junior year.  by then, we'd sucked our other roommate, leigh, into our shows.  this was the year of robin and stone.  there may never have been a more beautiful storyline.  robin was always the girl good, and stone was the bad boy.  stone unknowingly passed his h.i.v. to robin, and it was devastating for all of us.  robin was able to get her h.i.v. under control with meds, but stone was just too far in to be saved.  his death was one of the saddest times on television.  the day stone died, leigh, christine, and i recorded the episode so we could watch it in primetime and really concentrate on it.  the three of us sat in our living room and sobbed for 60 straight minutes.  and it wasn't normal sobbing - it was full-on hysterics.  tears, snot, sucking air - all of it.  we cried for days.  we still cry when we talk about it.  and when a blind stone squeaked out his final words to robin, "robin, i see you..." in the moments before he died - oh, that was it for us.  we lost it.  i could cry now as i write this.  i have never seen a better love story.

i've watched a lot of love and loss on these shows, but i've been loyal through everything.  some of it seems unbelievable, but that's what makes things exciting.  my mom teases mamaw and i for watching these shows because she says "this could never happen."  however, i would argue that her favorite shows probably couldn't actually happen either.  take "csi", for example.  do we really think that as a crime scene investigator and scientist, mac taylor of csy:ny would actually be the one chasing the criminals into empty warehouses, guns ablazing?  really, i think not.  everybody knows that's andy sipowicz's job.

soaps are just a fun way for us daytime viewers to sneak a peak into the lives of other families.  perhaps the chandlers, the buchanans, & the quartermaines were the first reality tv families.  we all know it's not really true to life, but it's fun.  and for me, it's a connection to my mamaw.  my mamaw is 82 now, and we've shared this passion since i was born, literally.  mamaw is as clear about soap storylines as she is about her own childhood. 

most of her "cronies" watch soaps too, and i think they like to talk about it during coffee & donuts on monday mornings.  i believe the art of the soap opera is a dying one, sadly.  i just read that in 1970, there were 19 soaps airing, and by the 2012 there will be 4.  that means that either soaps are just too far fetched for the world today, or more likely, the world thinks they aren't real enough. the influx of reality tv and talk shows seems to prove that point.

today is a very dark day in history as abc has just announced the cancellation of "all my children" and "one life to live." they are being replaced by 2 new talk shows.  i love a good talk show, don't get me wrong, but i really don't think we need 2 more.  at least let us mourn the departure of oprah for one year before we have 2 more thrown at us.  i can't imagine what my day will be like without amc and oltl.  there will be a huge chunk of time in my day with nothing to listen to.  my mamaw's vcr is going to be all sorts of confused.  she's been recording these shows since the vcr was invented (literally). we would give her cases of vhs tapes for christimas & birthdays.  mamaw never has enough tapes - she may be the last person still using a vcr instead of a dvr.  we have had several vcr emergencies where myself or my mom has had to run over and reprogram it so she doesn't miss her shows.  but, of course, it's worth it because we all know that if you miss one episode, you will be totally lost for the rest of the week.

so now that the news has broke that my shows are no more in a couple months, i'm sad for two reasons.  i'm sad that i will no longer be able to follow the romances of erica kane, the shady dealings of the chandlers, & i guess i will finally give up hope that zach is coming back from the dead.  i will also miss the split-personalities of viki buchanan, & i will miss watching david and dorian and their crazy love escapades.  and now, oltl has only a few months to prove that john mcbain is the real daddy of natalie's baby.  i am just so sad to have to say goodbye to all these characters.

i'm also more sad that mamaw and i will no longer be able to chat about the goings-on in pine valley and llanview.  for the two of us, this is a huge connection that will be lost.  we'll still have port charles to discuss, but llanview was always mamaw's favorite.  maybe some of the characters can move to port charles - the buchanans, the chandlers, jesse & angie (who were just reunited after 20 years apart), the mannings...  surely this isn't their swan song.  port charles would welcome them all i am quite sure.  i'd like to see todd manning up against sonny corinthos - now that would make for interesting story-telling.  or viki buchanan hanging out with tracy quartermaine - that could be pretty cool too.  what about jr chandler going into a business deal with luke??  and a love triangle, we'll need one of those.  hmmm.... what about blair and jax and amanda?  could be fun, right?

i'm not sure i'll be able to officially say goodbye to these shows.  they have been a part of my life for too many years.  i don't want to say goodbye.  saying goodbye would mean that i'm letting go of a little bit of my childhood.  i loved being able to watch these shows with mamaw.  it was our thing.  as i've grown up and she's grown older, this was something that was constant.  i guess as the years go by, we can continue to talk about old storylines.  or heck, maybe we can pull out some of her old recordings and rewatch them.  i think i still have the "stone's death" tape in one of my memory boxes somewhere...