By INGRID MCCLEARY
Lady Macbeth first introduced me to dark shadows. My best friend in sixth grade, Laura Zimmerman, was a grand actress, and it was she who garnered the starring role in our sixth grade "hippie" production of Shakespeare's tragedy. It was also she who first got me hooked on the television soap opera Dark Shadows.
Dark Shadows was unlike any other soap offered then--and now. It was eerie, filled with tombs and vampires. Racing home every day from Ellis Elementary to catch each episode cemented our budding relationship. From sharing Dark Shadows, we moved on to sharing secrets, boyfriends, clothes, money. Laura moved away that summer and took Dark Shadows with her. It wasn't the same without her, and the habit soon disappeared from my life.
Fourteen years later, I got hooked again. My husband and I had just moved from our rented apartment on Reed Avenue into a mobile home in San Jose. We were ecstatic over our first ownership and--no longer bound to the repressive "white walls" apartment rules--we painted and decorated in colors straight from the heart.
Two months after moving in, we discovered I was pregnant, which also made us ecstatic except that we'd purchased this mobile home in an adult park, which meant we'd have to sell it and find a new place, which ultimately meant we needed more money. (Does this need ever stop?) My husband's business was still in its embryonic stage so I found work as a consultant where I could choose my own hours (I'd grown tired of working 8 to 5; most night-owls do). Work began at 2 p.m.; this freed the nights, allowed me to sleep in and go to work alert instead of with the usual fuzzy-throated, droopy-eyed feeling. I first watched The Andy Griffith Show while I cleaned house and went through the mail, but soon tired of the reruns and moved from Mayberry to Pine Valley, the setting for All My Children.
Perhaps the best thing to be said for soap operas is that there are no reruns. Lives continually unfold--and unravel--before your eyes. And you can learn from them, by doing the exact opposite of what the TV characters do.
Nowhere else can you watch the evolution of a lie better than on soaps. Fact is, when you lie, troubles multiply. It ruins lives. "I did it to spare you!" "I didn't want to lose you!" "I did it to protect you!" A simple justification leads to complications, and before you know it, you're having your brother-in-law's baby.
The depressing thing about soaps is that no one's happy for long. As soon as they work out a problem, they're sent up, shipped off, written out or killed.
I've contemplated writing for All My Children since I've followed it for so long, but I like to solve problems, not create them. I'd have every man making sensible decisions, every woman facing the hard truth, every teenager owning up to his or her mistakes and living with the consequences.
Happy soaps don't hold viewer interest. Sad but true. I record All My Children and watch it later, fast-forwarding through commercials and mushy stuff. I only have time to catch juicy scenes, not the parts where people are kissing and hugging. I know what happiness feels like; it's the mistakes and the angst I want to avoid. I pick up clues on how not to run my life by watching their blunders.
People learn by example: the good, the bad, and the ugly. As the witches in Macbeth chanted, "Double double, toil and trouble." Soaps stir up trouble in the dark shadows of life.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, March 5, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.