Why I miss old fashioned afternoons and soap operas.

Soap operas are a part of my heritage. My great-grandmother listened to "As the World Turns" when it was on the radio in the 1940's. My grandmother carried on the tradition through her shiny , black and white TV. My mom, through the 60's and 70's, hippies and bra burning, and then I joined the family tradition in the 1980's, as soaps began showing cracks in the foundation as the times changed. Between the four of us, we watched several different soaps throughout the years, but the ones we always went back to were "As the World Turns" and "Guiding Light."

I know what most people think about soap operas; a waste of time for bored housewives, passe, overdone, old fashioned, corny, etc. And some of that is true. But for me, it was more about family, friends, and familiar faces. When you watch a group of people for years, on the same sets, listening to the same music and advertisements, and then talk about those people with your mom or grandmother about the day's show, it becomes a comfort somehow; gives a sense of continuity. Yes, sometimes the plots got a little out of hand, or got off course , or were just plain bad on occasion, but it really wasn't about that. It was hearing those familiar voices as you did the dishes or folded laundry, seeing the same people , growing older along with you, in roles that must have felt like a second personality to them after 30, 40, 50, or 60 years playing the same character. I would also think about my great granny listening to Nancy,(who was over 90 when she died a couple of years ago, still working on As the World Turns) on the radio in her kitchen, or my grandma bustling around her little pink 1950's tri-level, ironing my grandad's shirts as she watched Bob and Lisa (same people playing Bob and Lisa in 2010 in their 80's) and their scandals. Or my mom and I watching together on a summer afternoon and having a cup of coffee together. Soap operas equalled community, mother-daughter and woman to woman connections, and escapism- in fact, very much like what happens in a beauty shop!

I think more than anything it's the slow pace that I miss about the old soaps. The whole concept- getting caught up in a dramatic story line, the cliffhanger, the twists and turns that occur as the plot unfolds. The soaps really are an extention of the radio days, and although listening to a story on a radio in the evening is never coming back, I think we can learn a lot from those simpler days of radio and the soaps.

We don't need to have- and we shouldn't want to have- constant exposure to multi-media. It not only is excessive in general, it dampens our ability to think and visualize and imagine. Radio allowed for that, reading allows for it, but what we have blasting into our living rooms on television is simply that; blasting. It is immediate gratification, which equals no gratification intellectually or creatively. Television is over- stimulating in a time where we medicate a huge percentage of children for being overstimulated!! What are we doing?

We need space between what is coming into our visual and auditory fields. From the moment we get up until the moment we go to bed most of us are involved in quite a lot of "screen time", whether it is television, ipod, computer, cell phone, etc. We don't give ourselves a break. Time for talking, walking, paying attention to the light coming into the window or the birds chirping is completely neutralized by the artificial lights, sounds and visuals coming at us from every direction.

Even though I have worked full or part time throughout my adult life, I kept up with my two favorite soaps throughout college and into my adult life ( one advantage to slow plots), and, until last year, watched As the World Turns and Guiding Light any day that I could be home between 1 and 3 in the afternoon. The soap opera filled afternoons hearken back to a day we no longer recognize. When most women were home, doing their laundry, ironing and sweeping their homes. Taking care of things while the kids were at school and dad was at work, and probably, like we are today, a little bit bored with the mind-numbing household chores before them. So they had these few quiet afternoons when they escaped, amid the laundry, and became part of a more glamorous, exciting life- one they would never dare, or even want - but was fun to watch all the same. Then they'd call their friends and talk about the latest gossip- who went off the side of a cliff in their car, who was getting married, who died, who was having the latest illicit affair..... Those days are gone, for the most part in modern America. There are no more "housewives" left, not like that, at least. Today women must defend staying home and taking care of a home and children, and they certainly wouldn't think of admitting to watching a soap while they do it. We are supposed to be superwomen now, growing organic gardens for our family, helping support or fully supporting the family, staying fit, keeping up with the latest trends in child development and education. Learning how we can protect our children from online bullies.....

The simple days are over. We have "transcended" the simple, the naive, the slow and the old fashioned . Now we multi-task. And everything is fast, now, go, go , go. Are you aware that it is an accepted and popular phrase to tell people to "grab" something? "Grab" a drink or a burger? We have become rude, as well as overstimulated, tired, isolated and dumbed down.

In 2009, Guiding Light got cut after over 50 years on air, and last September, the last episode of As the World Turns aired after 70 years! I am still sad about the void left on an arbitrary afternoon when I'm doing laundry or the bills, and I wish I could hear Lucinda, Bob, Lisa, Barbara, Ed, Alan, Rick, or Lily or any of my other "old friends" going about their day in the next room. But I guess I'm one of the dinosaurs; few if any of my friends in the 40 and younger crowd watched soaps. And if they did, it was one like "The Young and the Restless", which was geared more toward the younger generation- It's relatively "new" one, beginning in the 1970s.

So I miss my old afternoons. I miss the simpler times they accompanied. But more than that, I guess I miss the connection with my mom, my grandma, and my great granny, who, even after they were gone, seemed to be there with me in my living room, laughing and gossiping about the latest plot twist. And being there folding clothes or doing the dishes, listening to our favorite characters, things were familiar again; and just for that hour or two, I had a little bit of them back with me. Just home, doing what moms and wives do, what they've always done. And that is what I miss the most about my soap operas..