GUILTY PLEASURE

I have a dirty little secret, well, not so secret now. A guilty pleasure if you will. Hi, my name is Kate and I am a soapaholic.

I DVR Days of Our Lives every day and every evening after the news, my husband and I watch it. I enjoy it very much but that is not the guilty pleasure.

Ryan’s Hope. 

Yes, that’s it. A half hour soap that ran from 1975 to 1989. It runs on the Soap Channel at 5 and 5:30 a.m. every Monday through Friday. I DVR it but I don’t share the watching with anyone else. Years ago, when it was still on the air, I caught brief periods of it twice – during pregnancies. So I have not seen it from beginning to end – or much of it at all, for that matter. And unfortunately, Soap Channel was already up to about 1978 when I discovered it was on. But that still gives me lots more to go. 

I’m very greedy about it too. I want it to be on seven days a week. And as there are two episodes each weekday, I should ration it and save some for the weekend. But I can’t do it. If it is there on the DVR, I have to see it. As a matter of fact, after I was in the hospital for a week in early 2009, I came home and had a Ryan’s Hope marathon. Greedy little pig – I had to watch them all in one night. It’s my crack. 

I wait until about 10:30 p.m. when all is quiet. I am by then pretty “medicinally enhanced” – I suffer from a chronic pain condition. And then I start to watch. It is like going to a Broadway play. Most of the actors were New York stage actors and the quality of the show is incredible. None of the craziness on Soap Operas today – possession, being held captive on an island, etc. As the second episode of the evening is drawing to a close, I start to get anxious… How will I make it until tomorrow? It truly is the high point of my day. I am absolutely transported. And it has helped me with my pain management. Nothing I take for the pain really helps me all that much. At 10:30 p.m. on a week end night, I am not pain free. True, I am “enhanced” to where it is just a dull sort of pain. But when I watch Ryan’s Hope, I truly am able to transport my mind right out of my body and am completely without pain. 

Nuts, huh? But in talking to someone else with a chronic pain condition, they understood completely. Everybody has their own thing that just completely transports them. Mine just happens to be an old Soap.