Have you ever tried to catch up with one you used to watch? Were you embarrassed? Can anyone tell me how exactly Leslie is alive?

Go ahead; tell the truth. Your boyfriend doesn't read this forum.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Answers

And see, Dad? I didn't tell everyone that it was you who was addicted to GH in the 80s, or that you used to tape it and make the whole family watch it at dinnertime. I would never reveal a shameful secret like that.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Soaps? Whaddyathink? I'm a Trekkie, and fiercely proud of it, I might add. Not the convention-going dressing-up-like-a-Klingon kind of Trekkie, mind you, more the kind of Trekkie who watches the series (all of them) like a space-version of 'The Bold and the Beautiful', with far better actors and more believable plotlines. And no, I have no dirty secrets about it.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

The main reason I bought a VCR in the early 80's was so I could tape Y&R while I was at work, which I have watched since the very beginning - sometime in the very early 70's, I believe, when my daughter was a baby and I was at home a lot (and liked being there - but then "Home" was more or less a hippie commune at the time).

So there, two secrets in one - I am still a Y&R junkie, still tape it and find it very relaxing to watch, and I lived in hippie communal households in the early 70's and *liked*

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

I started with GH in the 70s so I could check up on what my teens were watching, just after L&L's wedding.

(It's even worse now, Beth. Luke and Laura have separated and Laura is heavily involved with the retrofitted Cassadine who is her other son's father. Leslie was kept alive by this former non-existant Cassadine in order to please Laura (though he still didn't let her know for 15 years) with a drug that causes death-like symptoms. Who knows who was in the coffin... at this point there are more spare dead people in the cemetery than actual deaths.)

Then I got a life for awhile and ignored the soap till '92, when I had had foot surgery so I thought I'd see if anything had changed in 15 years while I had my foot up. Not really. I got into the soap newsgroup and was updating Thursdays for 4 years. I've suffered through the world's worst soap writer (they keep recycling these guys from soap to soap, never learning from past failures) and some mediocre ones, plus a really fun pair who retired to the east coast.

I enjoy the newsgroup because we can share rumors, figure out plots, tear out our hair over the same stupidities.

I still watch, though I'm not as regular as I was, since currently things are dull or nauseating. Besides, all the fun actors are on vacation.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

I tape and watch "The Bold and the Beautiful," God knows why. I tend to tape 2 weeks worth before I sit down and watch them all at once. Amber needs to die; who in Christ's name calls their husband and says "Hiiiiiiii, Honey, it's your gorgeous wife, here."???? Oh, Amber, diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

My older sister is my excuse for starting to watch, and I was 11 or 13 or so when the whole Scott-Laura-Luke thing was going on, just about the most susceptible age range. I watched through middle school until halfway through eighth grade, when I decided I wanted to be in the school play and wasn't going to let this soap stop me. Occasionally in high school, almost never during college, and also almost never during grad school (surprising, since it was the sort of painless, mindless, self-destructive behavior I indulged in then), and then in the fall of 1993 I heard that Luke and Laura were coming back! This I had to see. I saw a little reunion shower, Laura meeting Amy and Tiffany and all her best buds she'd ignored for 10 years. I either watched, called 800 numbers for updates or, eventually, read updates online, for another two years. I didn't pick up that Stephan Cassadine kept Leslie (dead in a car crash for all we knew) alive for Laura's sake (this excuse is pretty funny, considering what enemies the Cs and Ls were and, as Beth said, he didn't tell his beloved for ten years, during which she bore his child).

And yes, the infamous disco scene with that song--what is it? "Rise"? Does anyone remember that Rick and Jeff Webber were actually half brothers, that Jeff was Steve Hardy's son and not by Audrey? That makes it amusing, doesn't it, that now Audrey was recently raising long-gone Jeff's daughters--first half-cousins once removed to Lucky Spencer, who nevertheless fell in love with one, who was raped, in the aftermath of which Luke's crime also came to light.

I tried to watch it once a month ago, for the first time in seasons, and I was gratified to find myself so bored I couldn't even enjoy the guilty pleasure. Maybe I've beaten it.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

I've gone through brief periods of watching Days Of Our Lives, and I still read the synopsis when I notice it in the paper.

It all started when I would change the station to watch the news, and the last few minutes of the show would be on. I got curious about why that woman was lying in a coffin thinking. SO I had to watch for the duration of the Carly being buried alive story, then I stopped until the Marlena being possessed story, then I got into the Sami and Austin and Carrie story, but after a few months realized this one wasn't going anywhere, so I stopped.

I just don't get interested in all the plots, so when the one I am interested in gets pushed back, I stop watching.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

oh i wish my boyfriend read this forum.

anyhoo. I started with Ryan's Hope. Anyone else remember that show? I was about 9 or 10 when I was at a neighbor's house and this woman told another character: "I want you to seduce me."

From then I started watching all of the ABC soaps. I don't watch them now because of a non-existant VCR and work. But I will say that I screamed mightly when Susan Lucci won this year!

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

Yeah, I remember Ryan's Hope. Don't remember anything about it, but I do remember it. I also remember Edge of Night, which was my favorite. It was right in the middle of a good storyline when the Sacramento station stopped carrying it, too. Mostly I remember GH and All My Children, though.

Okay, Jan and Lisa, I'm going to have to rely on you two to get me up to speed. (Lisa, you know you want to watch it, stop fighting it.) I'm going to tape a week's worth of GH and see if I can stand it. I can't believe I'm doing this on purpose, but honestly, Buffy has been in reruns forever, and a girl needs to find excitement somewhere, doesn't she?

-- Anonymous, August 27, 1999