Soap Operas, Real Life And Journeys Elita Sohmer Clayman

TGIF we all know stands for ThankGodItsFriday. This can mean many different things to various people. When my husband had our pharmacy for twenty-three years, he worked every other Friday night, Saturday all day until ten and Sunday till five. So on those weekends, I did not say TGIF. On the following weekend, I did say that phrase or letters. I had to keep myself busy then because the kids had their own activities and I was left alone.

I searched for things to do especially on Sundays. Once, I rode out all the way to the end of York Road to see an appearance of a soap opera star that I liked on the serial called As The World Turns. At that time, I had been watching it every day for about thirty years. I stood in line like a kid waiting for a famous football or baseball star to appear. In the lines, there were mainly middle aged ladies; I was about fifty-six.

I looked up at him when my turn came and I felt that I was very short. He was extremely tall in real life and he did not appear that way on the screen. He was wearing worn out jeans, a nice suit coat and a tie and shirt, His name is Scott Bryce and he played on the show for many years. He was sometimes a bad guy with some redeeming qualities. He was friendly to us middle aged ladies and the young girls gushed over him with delight. I thought it quite worth the long ride out past Cockeysville at that time. It was like meeting a friend, you had never seen for a long time.

Another time, on a Sunday, I rode out to Marleys Station in Glen Burnie with my husband and met Christian Le Blanc from the Young and Restless. At that time, he was a bad guy and  it did not seem he would last long being that character on the show. When I got up to him from the line, I told him I admired his acting talents, he was extremely friendly and I wished him a long life as a character on that show. My wishes came true, because it is about twenty years later and his part is still major.

I enjoyed these meetings with these actors because when you get involved with soap operas, the acting is usually excellent, the stories are sometimes silly and other times they are interesting and normal. I remember on one from the sixties, the matriarch of the clan there, in real life had to have her leg amputated because she did not control her disease. They wrote that storyline into the show at her request and showed her recuperating and she came on at the end of the show and warned people to take the disease seriously. She also warned the ladies to have Pap smears because she also had uterine cancer. Her name in real life was Charita Bauer and on the storyline, her name was Berta Bauer

It shows that people who watched then did not have lots of medical advice, they were just storylines. She insisted that it be written in to warn the watching community. She did a fine thing with her warnings. Doctors were inundated with calls asking for appointments for Pap smears. Now there are so many medical sites online, everyone can look up practically any disease or symptom before they visit a doctor.

Story lines can be beneficial at times and if they help just a few, they have helped many, to ascertain any problems health wise.

I saw Tracey Gold recently on a talk show speaking about Anorexia. There was little known then thirty-five years ago about it and if you needed information, you had to go to a bookstore to find it and then to call your doctor for his advice and input.

There is much on the Internet and we have to know how to sift through the many sites declaring they are the best around to help you. On the two stories I watch daily, they are performing a public service. On one of them, they have a storyline about shoplifting by a character that is quite wealthy and she does it for psychological gratification. On the other one, a character, an extremely good person with high values was texting his bride-to –be and he hit a man with his auto. In the latter, the man, who was a friend, wants him prosecuted to teach him a lesson. We were hit by a man texting in 2008 and I know that terrible feeling of an extremely serious auto accident to our car and mainly to us, two seniors.

Soap operas called that because they were initially sponsored by soap companies; now they are sponsored by food products, cosmetics and anything else out there to sell. Soap operas can be an example broadcast by the television set into your living, dining or bedroom to warn you sometimes of bad things that can and will happen if you do not use your knowledge to stop them. Ben Franklin said “an example is the best sermon.” Sometimes, we need examples shown to us to stop bad things from happening before they do happen. It can be texting, smoking, cell phone talking while driving, shoplifting which is pure stealing, not taking care of our bodies and other things too,

People who ridicule soap operas probably are watching shows about criminals who prey on everyone, young and old. Sometimes, these shows give thoughts to people with evil in their minds already. We have to be able to separate the good ideas on all shows, including the soap operas from the bad ideas.

It is said that “life is a long journey if we are lucky; let us make it a beloved walk through life with all positive things happening to us.”  I am the creator of that saying and let us live it in our real life every day. TGIF it is Friday and all the other days of the week, when we stay healthy and informed.