I Love My Soap

I love my soap. Yes, I hardcore heart One Life To Live like you wouldn't believe.

See, I grew up on soaps, and always knew that I had a borderline obsessive tendency when it came to soaps, so after college, it seemed like a good time to stop.

I was four years old, and my babysitter used to watch All My Children, Ryan's Hope, those sands in the hourglass, General Hospital, and Search For Tomorrow.

And because she watched, I watched.

I remember being at a swim class and talking about "The Big Wedding" and everyone thought I was still talking about Charles & Diana. No, I was talking about Luke & Laura. How old was I? I was a Minnow level swimmer at the time.

School years were hard, the VCR hadn't been invented, so I could really only commit to General Hospital. Sometimes I'd catch the tail end of One Life To Live, then the beginning of Edge of Night. Sometimes those few minutes at the beginning & end of a soap are enough to hook you. I also religiously read Soap Digest, so I knew everything that was going on. On every soap.

Santa Barbara was around for awhile, and changed the way I watched soaps. Out with melodrama. They had to be clever, punchy, and silly. Then there was Port Charles, the occasional Loving, Sunset Beach, and I even tried out Bold & the Beautiful and Passions.

In college the ABC trifecta of AMC + OLTL + GH were my "Love in the Afternoon" shows of choice....

And then...

I graduated.

Got a job.

And that was it.

++++++++++

Fast forward many many years, and My Actor Friend Justin lands a role on One Life To Live... and I remember thinking to myself, "Tone, if we actually start watching this to support Actor Friend Justin, there will be no going back from this."

And there wasn't.

My Actor Friend Justin got carelessly killed off in an impossible-to-come-back-from-the-dead serial killer plot.

And that was more than a year ago. I am still watching.

And I've decided, I will continue watching. Because, goshdarnit, I Love My Soap.

There. I said it. No shame, either.

It's the thing I look forward to at the end of my workday, when I picture coming in the front door, kicking off my shoes, and flipping through the mail. The comforting routine of coming home at the end of the day includes getting comfy on the couch with a snack and my remote.

I laugh, I cry, I fast forward, and then sometimes I will text my girlfriend the cryptic three letters that spell "WTF" and she will know exactly which scene had me screaming at my TV.

And I Love. Every. Minute. Of. It.

++++++++++

One Life to Live is the best, especially now. All the crap stories, crap characters, and crap actors have been trimmed off (unfortunately, they also trimmed off some decent meaty parts -- i.e. the two hot gay guys who just became Daddy & Daddy).

I love some of the old stories that I remember from years ago are getting resurrected, and lately the acting has been so good. Believable, even.

I'm just really agitated that it's probably gonna get cancelled in the near future, and this frustrates me. What will I watch when I get home from work? Ew, like the news?

++++++++++

So here we are. In Toni Ryan's No Shame About Soaps Zone.

If you love your soap, declare it here.

I know I'm not the only one. And with all of our soaps in danger of cancellation at any moment, this might be a good time to show a little No Shame support.

(and p.s. do you think it's weird that I seriously considered ponying up to enter an auction to lunch with the hot guys of OLTL? Like the only thing that stopped me was the fact that the auction had already ended.)