DAYS OF OUR LIVES

I have an on again, off again history of watching  soap operas starting when I was young and when we only had a one channel. And when to watch anything on TV was still rather fascinating, at least to me. There have been many changes in the daytime dramas over the years and now they are about gone from the original networks. Their own particular interest and take on life captured the attention of many. The soap opera I now regularly watch is "Days of our Lives." 

It can keep my interest but it does need some suspension of reality at times and the story lines borrow from the the supernatural when the ratings dip. Are we really going to believe it when Stefano is killed the next time? Despite knowing how characters and actors come and go, I still got upset when Beau Brady recently left Hope and Ciara to go off on some urgent mission or adventure of self-discovery in Europe or other parts unknown. This seems to be a common theme for the show, Jack and John just to name a couple notorious absentees.

Also, I'm not sure if it's wise to talk about secrets in the middle of the Brady Pub, the Horton Town Square, the park, the ...you get the picture. But how else can you have someone staying off to the side who goes unnoticed as they hear some "personal" information. By the way people so quickly show up all the time, the lake can't be much farther than a 100 yards from the Square. And everything else is much closer. That part of Salem must be really overbuilt.

And how come if the DiMera mansion is supposed to be so big, almost everything happens in only two of it's rooms. Of the multiple staff, we only see Harold the butler, and most of the time he's never around to answer the door. Likewise, it's hard to believe that so much of what occurs in the hospital happens around one nurses' station, another area where secrets are dangerously shared. 

The patient room next to the desk has the convenient window with a blind in it that is mandatory for all medical shows, so I get that. But I don't get that it's used when the emergency room is full. First off, I have to think what happened in Salem to cause so many patients or is the ER just unbelievably small.

And does Rafe know that he's now back in the same room where Officer Bernardi was going to cut off his penis because he was involved with Kate, Stephano's ex-wife and business giant who never seems to be at the office but was shot by Sami, Rafe's ex-wife, with the gun that Kate had given her for an engagement gift because she was going to be marrying into the DiMera family. Of course Sami went unnoticed when Officer Bernardi entered because she was in the bathroom which was really the wrong time for him to forget his police training.

I could go on and probably should, but the point is that playing make-up, and sometimes playing make out, at least I think they're playing, isn't asking anything of me except a little appreciation for their constraints. It doesn't have to all fit together or necessarily make sense, in order to tell the story. Sure, it's all there to have fun with if you want but beware, it's easy to get caught up in one or more story lines and just have to see how they turn out. 

Admittedly, I am curious as to how the actors make it all seem possible despite the manipulated plot lines and how they overcome the ridiculous so we can take it all quite seriously if we want. Oddly, that isn't much different than what we get in many other areas of our lives except the potential for far more serious consequences. Which might explain why the only way I can watch "The Sopranos" is to see it as a sit-com.

Media, religion, government, education, emergency services, hospitals, the arts, business, sports, military and many other areas of life seem to flex according to how much "playing make-up" is going on. In addition there's the role that all the real  "making out" plays. There seems to be a lot of soap operas in the news lately and they're asking even more than the usual. Too many are willing to put the good and needed in jeopardy or  to slowly piss it all away because they are not willing to determine the real work from all the playing make-up.

I'm heartened by the abundance of human spirit that some have in conditions that I've seen but could never imagine living in. Their days are so different than mine. Somewhere along the way, I came to not feel guilty for the days that were given to me. But no day goes by that I'm not aware of other lives, especially those of children. I don't know what will come of it all, I suspect that's where faith comes in, but I would hope that I don't do anything that makes it harder for others, except maybe for my two boys who I know can handle it.

"Days of our Lives" might be relegated to a cable network someday, maybe someday soon. But if it endures just to November, it will be 48 years of sands going through the hour glass. I can get emotional watching a review of all that time. For me, it represents what it takes to keep it all going forward and the moments that mark the many passages. But as my wife would say, "It isn't REAL!" I still think there's something to it.

Obviously not everyone is going to know what the Christmas bulbs mean in the show but you don't really have to, a good guess will get you there. There are many ways to understand the days of our lives. It's going to take a lot of sorting though, so a definitive answer isn't going to be known anytime soon. But maybe it's not necessary to know it all in order to really live. I heard a poem on "The Writer's Almanac" that gave an interesting perspective.

Life is so many things wrapped in an uneven unfolding that can take us to the deepest despair and to the zenith of ecstasy in the same day. It doesn't have to be that drastic to get my attention, but I'll still never get used to such changes. Yet, regardless of how much I might want to to walk out of the show at times, my curiosity keeps me here, perhaps riveted. Even a rough ride can have a smooth ending. ...Right?