Soaps

Or as they were known in my family "Stories"...

As I sit here mindlessly listening to the last episode ever of some random soap opera, I'm reminded of so many things.  I don't think anyone in my family watched this particular soap opera, but aren't they all the same?  I'd like to stay it's nostalgic, but that would be giving my dysfunctional family far too much credit.

(As a disclaimer, especially for my husband, I do not watch soap operas and this is the first time I have ever seen this one.  It literally was on the station I had been watching and I can't find the remote.  My husband can also attest to everything you are about to read.)

For as long as I can remember, all the women in my family watched...well were addicted to soap operas.  All My Children, Days of Our Lives, Ryan's Hope, Another World, just to name a few of them.  The invention of the video recorders allowed them to perpetuate that addiction even further.  I mean how great it is to be able to virtually watch two an hour for a 3-4 hour stretch in the day.  Yep, that seems right.  Six to eight hours a day.

Over the past several years, it seems like the soap world is dwindling.  I am positive that if my grandma hadn't died 13 years ago, this would have killed her.  I wish that were a joke.

My grandma planned her entire day around her stories.  She couldn't be away from home between 11 am and 3 pm during any weekday.  She planned doctors visits, cleaning, shopping, and meals around them.  If there was a chance her morning plans wouldn't allow her to be home and eat lunch by 11 am, she would postpone them.  If she had a full morning, she would get up at 3 am so that she was safely planted on her love seat by the kick-off.

What is even funnier about her rigid schedule is that she would often fall asleep during them.  I mean good grief, she'd been up for hours!  I think that's why Friday's were especially important.  Everyone knows that all the exciting stuff happens on Fridays to keep you in suspense through the weekend.  And really, isn't it all about the climax when it comes to soaps?

You might think that rigid schedule would be enough for one person, but NO.  It gets even better....um....I mean worse.

It wasn't just a schedule thing for her.  It wasn't just a show for her.  My grandma lived as if these people, these actors, were real life people who were allowing their lives to be displayed on tv.  My grandma died long before reality tv was wildly popular, so it isn't like she could get it confused.

When my grandpa would return home for the day, he would always sit at the table for dinner and quietly listen to my grandma talk about her day.  Since I lived with them for a few years, I got to witness this first hand.

Yes, my grandpa would sit silently as my grandma shared the excitement of her day.  She would often lead off with Bo and Hope's adventures and end with some moving story about Cass or talk endlessly about how she didn't know how they were going to get Marlena to not be possessed. 

Keep in mind, she didn't talk about these things as if they weren't real.  They were very real to her.  A hugely unemotional person would cry if someone was fighting for their life or died.  It didn't seem to phase her that the funeral she was watching lasted for a week or two. 

Monsters, demons, devil possessions....she embraced them all.  She never seemed to be shocked by the number of times someone returned from the dead or how many times someone magically spawned a twin or even triplet.  It wasn't unnatural to her that a baby born last year was now a vengeful teenager this year.

She took it all in as if it were real.  I am not sure why she was this way.  It isn't like she lived in filth or with abuse.  On the surface, she had nothing to escape from. 

My great-grandma was a paranoid schizophrenic.  I sometimes wonder if this wasn't carried down to my grandma and her irrational belief in soap operas was part of a hidden or undiagnosed illness.

Personally, I'm not upset to see the soap opera fade away.  But I have to wonder exactly how my grandma would have reacted...or maybe I don't want to know.