This comment from DavidK93 in the PSSNS gave me the idea for this thread. All of here obviously watch a lot of soaps, or have been watching soaps for quite some time. What are some things you find occuring in your everyday life that are a direct result of you watching too many soaps?

For me, it's definitely talking to myself. I mean, on some occasions I wonder if I'm going crazy, because when things piss me off, I'll start telling myself how pissed off I am...out loud and to myself. This actually happened in the school library once and drew a few stares.

When I get angry, I turn my back to people and look out a window while addressing them, just like they do on the stories.

You have a slightly erotic dream about Lucas and that glorified washcloth he calls a towel.

Oh, thestatic (and my Soul Brotha or Gay Husband, DavidK), that is totally me. I've always talked to myself, but usually not in public, and rarely do I answer myself. Then the other day I actually told myself, aloud, to stop talking to myself, lest people think I'm a nut job! Nope, it didn't take. But lately, the public self-talking has gotten out of control. I keep getting busted! The worst part of this is (and I think this may have more to do with getting older and not caring what people's opinions of me are, rather than my sanity) that instead of thinking rude things about others in public, I've moved beyond that to muttering them under my breath - and lately caught myself saying them in my "outside" voice!

And thank Dog I'm not alone in the erotic dreams about soap characters. Now, if I could only stop talking about them as if they were real people... ;)

.... when your biology class textbook describes Bombay Phenotype Syndrome and you find yourself explaining in class about the resolution of AJ's paternity on GH.

.... when you and your husband are furniture shopping and you both agree that an elegant, imposing four-poster is like the one where Stavros 'had his way' with Laura.

.... when you encourage your husband to get his haircut a certain way because it points up his resemblance to Sky on EON.

.... when you dye your hair dark brown [and you're fairskinned and blue-eyed!] to look like Raven on EON.

.... when you have 150 screen caps and other pictures of Robert Kelker-Kelly downloaded on your laptop.

.... when terms like 'very Cassadine', 'she's a latter-day Erica Kane', and 'don't go all Victor Newman here' are commonly heard in your house.

.... when you discuss the feelings and motivations of soap characters as if they were friends of yours.

I turn my back on people when I feel my eyes tearing up. I talk to myself, too, but I do it looking into a mirror. I hope that doesn't make me a psycho like Kevin on Y&R. At least the content of my talks is nothing like his. "I've got to call her. I can't put it off any longer.…"

...when you see something called "Stellar Spectra" in your astronomy lab and can't help but think of what Sally (B&B) would say.

When a new person arrives at your job, you immediately wonder what shady past they have and what connections they have to super-villains in your town.

Well, smack my bottom and call me Eve and Julian's abducted lovechild! I saw the thread title and decided to come over and pitch in the bit about talking to myself, only to find that it was the inspiration for the thread! Go, me!

Well, to add to it, I sometimes get to the point where I, too, am telling myself aloud to stop talking to myself, because it's freaking me out. And, yes, I do say out loud the part about being freaked out.

---I picked up my class rolls for a substitute teaching gig, and every single student had a soap-opera name. Honestly. There were three Brookes in one class, four or five Austins, and even a Raven.

---When online sites ask for your name and address for a "registration" (translation: we're going to spam you and send crap to your house), I put down a soap character and their imaginary address.

Remember when there were Kaylas everywhere you looked?



Daniel, that's awesome! I'm going to be either Raven Alexander Jamison Swift Whitney Devereaux Whitney or Helena Cassadine from now on...

One more from me, from last night (or night before... I don't know right now if it's tonight or tomorrow): When you have a dream about watching stupid (yet somehow completely plausible) promos/commercials for your shows, and in your dream your first words to your husband when he comes into the room are, "Excuse me honey; those promos were so ridiculous that I have to go post something about them right now."

(Even odder when all of those promos involved something to do with oversized cardboard boxes, and characters getting trapped in them. WTF?)

As far as the inspiration for this thread...well I've been talking out loud to myself for years now...can't say that I totally blame that on soaps, but I will say that since I started watching DAYS, I've felt a lot sillier whenever I catch myself doing it.

What I have done recently is repeat the only line that the writer for DAYS and Passions can use as an insult..."Damn you, [so and so]! Damn you to hell!" The first time I did it, I thought 'The hell? Did I really just say that?

...when something happens that I don't like and I want it to stop, I find myself thinking "I just need a plan!"

Tudor Queen, it really makes you stop and think when you have to stop your own sister from naming her daughter "Brooke" after the Gaping Cooter (TM the B&B thread). This was 1992, and I think I helped my niece tremendously by talking my sister out of it. I mean, look at the behavior of her potential namesake.
My poor niece would have a complex.

Other signs that I watch too many soaps........

---No matter how long ago it got cancelled, I still find myself gazing longingly at the clock every day at 2pm, wishing I was home to watch AW. In four years of undergrad studies and three years in grad school, I never had a 2pm or 3pm class because I didn't trust my VCR.

---You refer to actors by their former soap roles, even when they are in a new role. I mean, the other day on AMC I saw Michelle Bauer and Donna Love in a scene together. And I'm just loving Dixie and Todd on ATWT, even if she's married to Peter Hollister these days.

Daniel, you should catch Paulina on "Days," then. Or Adrienne. Oh, and I saw Cass on an episode of "Law & Order" (SVU, I think) recently. He still looks (and sounds) great. Adam, on the other hand, needs to stop hawking Rooms to Go. He used to be a COP, for crying out loud!

And I'm with ya on the 2pm thing. I still do that too, sometimes. Sigh.

I've never watched even 5 minutes of Passions because they cancelled AW for it.

Most embarassing watching too much soaps moment - walking to junior high with a friend, not listening to her jabber on about something because I was thinking about GH, and then calling her Monica (which so wasn't her name). Unfortunately, it was when everyone watched GH, so she immediately called me on it.

Also, when walking home from school we use to practically run the mile so that we could catch MAYBE 10 minutes of GH and *fingers crossed* Rick Springfield. Good times.

And I have definitely given soap inspired names out to marketers, internet sites, etc. Although I usually just use the last name. I'm particularly fond of Cory - it's just common enough that folks don't give it a second thought.

...when you get upset and stay upset for years over the paternity of a character, and then feel relieved for days when said paternity is revealed years later to be a lie (Matthew on OLTL).


Not that I want to encourage you to watch "Passions," but I thought AW was canceled for "Sunset Beach," and then "Sunset Beach" was canceled for "Passions."


I have actually found a scientific site or two on the Web that uses the AJ paternity story to explain BPS. So you're not the only one, TudorQueen.

I double-checked it was Passions (unless Sunset Beach was cancelled at the same time as AW and then I guess it's a toss up as to which one was cancelled for Passions - I never watched Sunset Beach). It's funny that I hold a grudge because by the time AW was cancelled it was terrible and I hadn't watched in years. Another sign that you watch too much soaps - you can get angry and hate TPTB for doing things to characters on shows you no longer watch.

In '99, the schedule was DOOL, then SB, then AW. SB and AW were cancelled that year, and Pssions was put on after DOOL.

Don't know if this is an example of my everyday life, but I hope it fits the topic of being an obsessive soap watcher:

I played tennis in high school, and we had practice from 1:30 to whenever. One day, I had forgotten to set the VCR (I was a DOOL fan at the time) and I faked an illness in order to get home in time for the show. It was snowing and icy and in my desperation I ran my little two-seater off the road into a fence. I did not make it home in time. I was soo upset.

Another time we were moving into a new house and we hadn't had the cable connected yet. This was when Carly and someone (Lance? the foreign count guy?) were going to kiss and I made the movers bring the TV in first so I could watch the show sitting by myself in the tv room. It was grainy and fuzzy and my mom thinks I am crazy to this day, but oh well.

And I talk to myself all the time.

For all those who faked sick, ran home from school,etc to catch a soap, check this out:

My dad was a television Nazi when I was a kid. For years, my sister and I were only allowed one hour of TV on school nights. We had to be very choosy. However, Dad wasn't home when we got back from school at 3pm, so we snuck in Santa Barbara and GH for years before he caught on. So, what did he do when he finally got wise to our sneaky ways? He cut the freakin' television cords in half and installed these wacky plugs that would plug into the TV cord, then into the wall. Every morning before he left for work, he would take away the part that plugged into the wall and hide it so my sis and I couldn't rot our brains on soaps after school. Thus began the daily ritual of hunting the plugs - sometimes we'd find them, and Luke, Mason, Julia et al were ours for that wondrous afternoon. However, we had to be very careful to replace the plugs as we found them. That way Dad would think his hiding place was safe and use it for awhile. We would invariably screw this up, and a new hunt would begin for the new plug stash.

No one had to work as hard to see soaps as me and my sis - probably why I'm addicted to this day.

Man, my childhood was weird - you don't even want to get me started on the watermelons that served as my birthday cakes during Dad's Sugar Nazi years. Oy.

I was talking to a friend of mine, who had stopped watching GH a year earlier, about the show, and was all "And then Liz was on these roofies and Lucky was able to love her, but only because she wouldn't remember, so the Ice Princess wasn't controlling him temporarily, and ...." only to be cut off by my friend's condescending "Wow, it's like they're your friends or something".

I used to race out of French class as soon as the bell rang and run home to try and make it in time for "Edge of Night". One day I ran right by my mother, who was watching something else on our enclosed porch. "Aren't you going to say hello?" she asked sardonically, to which I responded, in a voice equal parts astonishment and high dudgeon, "Nancy Karr might be dying and you expect me to chit-chat???"

Happily, she was amused. But she did start to think maybe I needed to stop watching soaps.

One of the most common side-effects I get from obsessive soap-watching (GL, PC (till cancellation), ATWT, OLTL, GH, and AMC if I feel like it) is that when I meet someone, I immediately try to identify the soap character they resemble the most. I have about five or six friends that I nailed down in about thirty seconds. It’s eerie. And I frequently dream about my soaps, though it’s interesting because my subconscious likes to resolve a s/l for me, several weeks before the actual conclusion. I’m only 14 though, and I started watching five years ago, so my subconscious isn’t too sharp on continuity.

I do something sort of similar--I look at real-life situations, groups of people, and so on and think to myself, "Now if this were a soap, here's what would happen..."

As such, I've always wanted to see a Scream-style movie in which faithful soap watchers are going through typical soap storylines in their own lives and using their knowledge of the usual cliches to try to avoid disaster.

YKYBWTMSW You work in an office by yourself, and your boss brings in his old, old, old projection-type television - but there's no screen to project on to. So you sit on the floor, and watch GH every day through the projector hole thingy - even though the whole soap is upside down

...while watching your favorite primetime show (that'd be Alias) you don't even blink when the characters die and then turn up alive and healthy 5 episodes later. Hey, they never found the body and even if they did, that stupid DNA shit can be faked. In fact, you steadfastedly refuse to believe that any character on any show is dead. Ever.

No matter what soap they're watching - your friends call you to fill them in on what they missed over the last decade or two.

"Alexis had Sonny's baby? WHA?!!! - call Jen she'll know the story"

Seriously, the only time I won't know the answer is if its Y&R. So sad.

OK, I'm really going to age myself here but....

when I was three I apparently became extremely paranoid about going up and down the stairs because Penny Hughes was pushed down a flight of stairs.

I can also remember having an exam in high school in pre-VCR days and missing Roger Thorpe falling off a cliff. I grilled my mother for an hour... Did we actually see the body hit the ground? Was he actually pronounced dead by a doctor? No, the body was washed away by the ocean? Ha, he can't possibly be dead. It took GL about 15 years to prove me right, but eventually my beloved Michael Zaslow did come back.

Well, if you've ever seen the footage, you've got to wonder how he survived. Poor Roger struck some rocks on the way down--hard.

Heh. Same pre-VCR situation in reverse--when I was about 12 and was on summer vacation, my mom made me watch All My Children while she was at work and take notes when Jenny's jetski blew up to see if she died. I'd never seen the show before so my notes were all like, "...and then some woman named Nina stepped off an elevator and it was a big deal for some reason...and everyone keeps talking about someone named Erica and wondering where she is, but you never saw her..."

You know you've been watching too many soaps when you realize that with about 10 macros, you can script an entire episode because you know exactly what everyone's going to say. And when there's virtually no situation in life that doesn't bring to mind a related soap storyline.

And Zas said as much in his video: roger -- the scandal years. If you can get this video, you should. It's priceless, if for nothing else than Zas in his prime. I believe his (paraphrase) was: Poor Roger had to go to a chiropracter for years.

My YKYBWTMSW moments:
1.) Well, actually this might be my Mom's YKYBW...moment, but when I was in Jr. High I used to wear my hair in a curly fro (not from a jheri, just from rollers) and I had this blue and yellow striped polo shirt. One day, she said: "You look just like Roger." Unfortunately, I was female, but I loved the reference. (This was in the heyday of Rolly.) I didn't mind 'cause I've been a Rolly from way back.

2.) I can't sleep tonight and what do I find on VH1? It's Soapy stuff. I forget the title, but it was classic. They had the "slut of springfield" piece in and lot of Lily/Rose stuff. Good times. Although, I could've done without all that GH/Passions stuff.

Before I got hooked on soaps, I already watched a lot of TV. So when my friends who didn't have VCRS had to watch the show for their parents at work, they called me and told me to watch, then inform them what happened.

Now, people still ask me what happens on shows -- friends, their parents, family members, one of my teachers at school...

Whenever you meet someone who has a soap name you compare their personality to said soap character and see if they have anything in common. When I heard my cousin was going to name her son Brandon I said, good, Brandon on Days is a doctor.

No matter what prime time shows or movies soap actors go on to they will always be referred to by their soap name.

I seem to want to refer to people by soap names that correspond with their personalities. It doesn't even have to be people...it can be a song, or a moment. "Oh, that guy is so Alec Gilroy," or "That song is SO Frisco and Felicia."

I used to teach school and now work as a social worker and the names you run into do reflect the parent's watching habits. The adopted Asian kid named Laura and another Fallon...Erica was really big when I taught.

I got my first VCR in 1985 when I went back to work full time after my kid! My beloved got it for me as a I'm glad there will be more cash now gift. It's funny how we can relate events by our soap habits.

I found this unreasonably funny.

I also discuss my favorite soap opera characters incessantly as if they were family/friends. Unfortunately, most of my friends have, you know, lives so they don't understand but I have been faithful to Guiding Light for 5 years now and my sister, rhomon, is just as addicted as I am. We can argue/discuss forever and we both adore TWoP so we use the abbreviated names (Sharina, Manny, NuEden, McScruff). At home together this is fine, but out in public our conversations are peculiar to people that can hear us. They must think that we have the weirdest friends with the most dramatic lives.

A co-worker and I have just "come out" to each other as soap fans - she's all CBS, I'm down to GL and OLTL. Now, we're discussing the latest in her office, with the door closed, when the guy she shares the office with isn't at work!

As great as it is to be here, we've both really missed having someone to chat with in person. And yes, I'm teaching her all the TWoP nicknames for GL!

Two new people in my class are soap watchers. One of them a cute, and above all straight guy. Whoo hoo!

YKYBWTMSW... this is the highlight to your day.

Word to those of you on the excellence of the CBS Roger Thorpe: The Scandal Years Tape. Apparently, they decided that Roger bounced off the rocks and down into the water making his resurrection possible.

Sigh, I think after watching enough daytime and nighttime soaps that you eventually become a sort of Minor Soap Opera Deity and you reach a level of enlightened consciousness and prognosticative empowerment, a place where the soaps really can't throw anything new at you because you've already foreseen both the problem/new story twist they are "cleverly" trying to throw at you and the probable solutions they will try and use.

If you read the boards, especially this sites, the contributors are all miles ahead of the shows.

Best of all, if you're part of the hard-core group of fans that read the magazines, you can REALLY start to sense what shit will coming down the pike based on the hirings and firings and the gossip. Like when Simon "died" on ATWT or Macy "died" on B & B no one batted an eye-lash because we all knew how easily resurrectable both popular characters would be if the actors and shows could come to an agreement.

What's so interesting is that the rules laid down by soaps when it comes to injuries, death, resurrections, etc. seem to apply equally well to regular TV and Movies as well.

I think the soaps represent a sort of emotional Omega Code for how all drama will eventually have to go down.

Okay, a couple years ago there was a storyline on OLTL where Colin McGyver was killed and there was a huge trial on it with like 15 different suspects. I had a sneaking suspicion that Nora was the real killer (this was back in my pre-online days) but my mom was convinced that it wasn't. I'd argue with her about it all the time. Anyway, on the day that Nora confessed to killing Colin I absolutely spazzed. My mom was on the phone with my brother downstairs so I came racing down the stairs screaming "Nora killed Colin! Nora killed Colin!" and I fell down the stairs and sprained my ankle, still screaming those very words.

My brother still makes fun of me for it to this day.

Don't feel bad, in the absence of enough exciting soap operatic drama that one might experience in a small village or tribal grouping soap opera's are the 21st century substitute. You know it's just actors playing characters but the stories go on for so long, are so complex, and you build such rapport you can't help but treating them with some degree of reality even when you know they are not.

I personally was obsessed with GL's Roger and Holly and SB's Laura and Michael and was devastated after both long-lost couples finally got back together only to be later be trounced (and kept apart again) by really shoddy and non-continuity based writing.

This was especially true of Roger and Holly whose eventual re-connection was as inevitable as it was great and which was utterly ruined by the stupid people who have had GL in their clutches since the mid 1990's forward.

Even written drama. My YKYBWTMSW moment came while I was reading Cold Mountain. About 6/7 of the way through the book, two of the characters were in the midst of a conversation, and they suddenly had an exchange that sounded incredibly familiar. I realized that the exchange sounded familiar because I'd heard it a gazillion times on soaps. Based on that one exchange, I suddenly knew exactly how the book was going to end...and I was right.

YKYBWTMSW you know exactly which conversation Marabet is referring to. And you thought exactly the same thing.

YKYBWTMSW your roomates are watching Maury about pregnant women who don't know who the father is, and Maury says they have to wait until the baby is born to find out, but you interrupt that now they have a test that can detect fetal cells in the mother's blood and use them to determine paternity. How do you know this? Because on AMC they are using a vial of Bianca's blood to prove that Kendall is having Michael Cambius's baby and avoid the amnio Kendall could not actually pass. It never occurs to you that just because they have developed a technology on a soap, it might not be real.

P.S. Ok, so actually it turns out it is real. But I didn't know that at the time.

After reading all these comments about Roger, I was wondering, whatever happened to his character after the recast. Also who was the one who fired Michael Zaslow after he got sick?

And topic: YKYBWTMSW you find yourself explaining to a group of friends how Dr. Romano isn’t really dead since we never saw the helicopter land on him and we saw no body. He’s just wandering around somewhere with amnesia and will come busting in when Elizabeth is about to get married.

That was the lovely and talented Paul Rauch though he makes Conboy seem a lot better depressing as that is. Roger and Amanda left town to run Spaulding West together in California.

I know I've watched too many soaps, when I was out shopping one day and trying on an outfit and went OMG that's the music they played in the Towers club on GL ten years ago.

If you want to talk about obsessed, I couldn't get the Michael and Laura love theme out of my head for years even after they were off the show and SB ended. I finally tracked down some SB fan pages and actually managed to find it.

It's called "Somewhere" it was performed by Aeone but is only commercially available as recorded by Rick Springfield on his album Sahara Snow which was a Euro release only.

Talk about desperate, but it was just such a cool song!

YKYBWTMSW . . . at every family holiday gathering, you search the faces of your new cousins for signs that they weren't actually fathered by your male relatives.

YKYBWTMSW . . . every time someone asks you a really important question, you pause and stare at them for 30 seconds, wait for commercial, then answer.