General Hospital

I realize that by documenting this info I am setting myself (and Mom) up for ridicule, but what the heck. I am a General Hospital junkie. My addiction started in college. I had seen GH a number of times before that - Nurse Jessie, Audrey, Dr. Steve, but as a communications major at UT, I was treated to daily broadcasts in the communications building. It was the era of Luke and Laura and disco. My addiction was further fueled by the men of Tau Kappa Epsilon. As a TKE little sister, I knew I could always count on calling the frat house for a ride somewhere, or a GH update. Yep, the men of TKE were addicts and pushers of the daytime drama. This was before the days of DVR or even SoapNet updates. If you missed an episode, you had to wait for the Saturday newspaper's soap recap.

I loved me some Rick Springfield (Dr. Noah Drake), Frisco and Felicia, Elizabeth Taylor as Helena Cassadine, and Demi Moore as Jackie Templeton. Even after college, I would tape (VCR) the show. Through all of this Janelle (Mom) would just shake her head. Sure, when I was a baby she watched As the World Turns while she was doing her ironing or something, but she just couldn't understand the commitment.

At some point, I was able to shake the habit. I would check in from time to time to see Stone, Brenda, Holly, and Robert. I was really into the whole Carly, Tony, Bobbie, Jason, AJ thing. (For those of you who don't have the first clue, Bobbie is Luke Spencer's sister. They grew up in a brothel, with Bobbie turning tricks as a teenager. After changing her life, Bobbie became a nurse, married Dr. Tony Jones and had a son. Enter Carly, the kid Bobbie had as a teenager and gave up for adoption. Carly set out to hurt Bobbie by stealing her man. But Carly got pregnant by AJ, said the baby was Tony's, then Jason's....... ). But it wasn't enough to get hooked again.

Anyway, a few years ago a couple of my teacher friends were talking about GH and I got curious about what was going on. I was living with Mom by now, so I had to hide my watching, or face her ridicule. I would DVR the shows, then watch when she was doing something else. the real Lucky was back, and he was involved in a love triangle with his on again off again love, Elizabeth, and his half brother, Nikolas.
But then, it was summer, and there were only reruns and bad reality shows on tv. Mom started to come in to the room and sit down when I was catching up on the show. Next came the questions - "who is the baby's father?", "how many kids does Sonny have?", "is that Luke?", "where's Laura?"

By the time school started in the fall, she was hooked. When I got home on Friday afternoons she couldn't wait for me to change clothes so we could watch the entire week's episodes of GH. I even caught her cheating once. She would watch the show while I was at work, then pretend not to have seen it when we watched the recordings.

On Saturday, I leave for grad school. I won't have time to watch soaps. Mom will have three weeks of recordings at her disposal. Will Luke return during this time? Will Brenda stop being annoying? Will Michael follow Jason and Sonny into the mob? Will Mom watch without me? Tune in to find out!

P.s. Yay Carly and Lucky for your daytime Emmys. Mom told me about the wins. Ha!