I love soaps

I just got finished watching All My Children. Kendall is pregnant and in a coma because JR dropped boxes on her trying to kill his wife. Kendall's husband and her family are fighting over her unborn child. See, she needs to have a miracle drug or she'll die. So they have to do a c-section but the baby's a preemie and may die. Now they're in court trying to decide who's responsible for her. Her mum, her husband or the baby's father. Oooh... I didn't mention that her husband Zach isn't the father of the baby it's actually Ryan who pretended to be dead but was actually alive and... UGH! Soaps are so dumb. But this one isn't bad compared to Passions which is doing a sublimely ridiculous parody of The DaVinci Code. I don't even want to go into it.

But I still watch them. Why? Because my mum did. I remember sitting at her knee as a little girl while she braided my hair in intricate designs. That was what we were doing when we watched in amazement as a character ludicrously said to a bear, a real, live, wild, grizzly bear on location in the woods, "You can't eat me, I'm ERICA KANE!" and the thing walked away. I'm serious. I still remember the smell of spray starch as she ironed my dad's work shirts on the day Cliff and Nina got married.

I'm not saying soaps are the best shows in the world. They're campy, badly written and wildly overacted. But they're a great source of nostalgia for me. Watching them reminds me of when I was little and my mum taking care of me and our home. I'll probably watch them for a long time to come. And if they also give me a tip or two on how to deal with wild animals when I go camping in July, well, that's just gravy, isn't it?

kxx