The Sunday Memory Drawer - True Confession

Guilty as charged.

Yes, I must confess.   From time to time, I have watched soap operas.   No, wait, you're supposed to call them "continuing dramas."  Or simply "daytime television."

Whatever.   I have gotten sucked into them at various times in my life.  

Let's face it, folks.  If you perhaps sneered at this revelation and think less of me than you did four paragraphs ago, please look in the mirror.  Do you watch "Game of Thrones?"   Yes, a continuing drama.  Were you a fan of "Mad Men" the past six years?  Um, a continuing drama.  Are you one of the lemmings that tunes into either "The Bachelor" or "The Bachelorette?"  Yes, it's about real people but, still...a continuing drama.  If you don't think those reality shows aren't scripted, then you probably think that Bernie Sanders is Presidential material.

These continuing dramas have been the staple of first radio and then television for years.  Heck, the term "soap opera" came from the 1930s when most of those radio dramas were sponsored by the likes of Borax and Lux.  They dominated the daytime hours and then, as expected, ultimately infiltrated prime time television as well.  For Pete's sake, one of my favorite TV shows of all time was "Knots Landing."   I miss it to this day and my Thursday nights have not been the same since.   

But, I also got taken hostage by the likes of "Dallas" and "St. Elsewhere" and "24" and "Homeland."   They hit you with a cliffhanger at the end.  They want you to come back next week.

Yep, that's continuing drama.   Or...gasp...a soap opera.

Sure, on daytime, it can all get very silly and ludicrous.  Discovering children you never knew you had.  People regularly and almost routinely returning from the dead.  Even demonic possession that requires an exorcism.  How completely asinine.

Yet, I have loved it.

You can blame my grandmother for getting me started on this filthy habit.  

I don't know if, back in the day, she was glued to her radio console listening to Ma Perkins, but she certainly had her "daily stories" on TV.  Her afternoon regimen was the same every day.  From 1PM to 2PM, she'd nap on the living room couch.  Well, actually, she would call it her "beauty rest."  Then, she'd pop on the TV and be fixated on the black-and-white screen until it was time to cook dinner...at 4PM.  

One day, I bounced home from school and saw what she was watching.  I asked the simple question.

"Shhh!"

It was like I had interrupted a church service.  

So, I sat down and joined her.  At a point where conversation was allowed, Grandma started to fill me.

"This one here.  Oooh, she's such a tramp."

She's a hobo?   I was in the fourth grade.  I didn't know all the lingo yet.  But, whereas a question like that to my parents would have been ignored like a mosquito, my grandmother explained to me just why this woman was a tramp. Who needed sex education in school?   I had Grandma.   And her "stories."

When summer came and school was out, afternoons in Mount Vernon, New York were usually hot and humid.  But, my grandmother's living room was fan-cooled and the only heat I was really exposed was from Llanview or Port Charles or Another World.  

The same thing happened at night when ABC introduced the very first nighttime soap called "Peyton Place."  Carefully monitored entertainment for this little kid.  Nah.  Not in my house.
  
Grandma was watching the saga of the Harringtons and the McKenzies right along with me.

It was probably a strange dichotomy. I had probably just wrapped up my spelling homework. Or perhaps a book report on the latest offering by Beverly Cleary. Something with Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy. It was time for television. And, yes, there were Munsters and Barney Fife and Red Skelton. But, there was also the town of Peyton Place. Where somebody had just been impregnated by somebody else's husband. Or there was another pregnant lady getting pushed off a cliff. Or teenage pregnancy. Or somebody cheating on somebody else's wife. You didn't see this with Herman and Lily. It certainly didn't go on in Mayberry. But, it was captivating to me.

"Peyton Place" is probably how I learned about all the stuff that nobody talked about in my house. The quiet conversations my parents would have in the kitchen late at night when I was supposedly cuddling Zippy The Chimp to sleep. Indeed, "Peyton Place" clued me in to all the things I was missing around me. And, in a very bizarre connection, the folks of that New England hamlet taught me about morality. What was right and what was wrong. How to treat people and how not to treat people. And, all the while, I was enjoying it. The show was damn fun. Maybe my grandmother was not irresponsible letting me watch this with her. Perhaps, in her own way, she was even wiser beyond her advanced years.

I can never remember a time when my grandmother wasn't watching a daytime story or two.   As I got older, I came in and out of them.  But, Grandma never did.  

When she stopped watching all together, I knew the end was likely near.   And it was.

So, yes, over the years, I have enjoyed the nighttime soaps and, as I wrote earlier, I couldn't get enough of the Ewings and the McKenzies and the Sumners.   Indeed, "Knots Landing" was really nothing more than "Mad Men" without the 60s wardrobe.  It was clearly the best drama on television and was virtually ignored by the critics.   But, then, everybody turned around and the damn thing had been on for 13 years.

As for daytime TV, I really don't pay attention anymore.

Okay, I lied.  If I'm home, I'll check in to one or two.  Gee, these days, there are really only four of them left.  That's got to be tough on the creative folks who have toiled in this industry for years.   Less shows means fewer jobs.

And, one more confession...when you work at home a lot more than you used to, a lunch break for me is now an hour with "Days of Our Lives."  In one of my more surreal moments in life a few weeks back, I met for lunch with an actress from that show on a potential project.  I came home and flipped on the TV.  Well, there she was.  I thought about my grandmother at that instant.  She'd be so impressed, even if she probably thought all the characters were real.

"As long as she's not like that other one.  Ooooh, she's such a tramp."

Dinner last night:  Meat pizza at Stella Barra.