Confessions of a Former Soap-aholic

When I was a little kid, my brother and I were babysat regularly by a teenager who lived on our street named Cheryl.  Cheryl was actually only about 5 years older than me, but when you're 10 and she's 15 it's a pretty decent difference in maturity level.  Between Cheryl and her older sister Connie, their family provided babysitting duties for our family for quite a large chunk of my childhood.  My parents divorced when I was 7, forcing my mom into the undesirable territory of single mom-hood, and the necessity of good after school babysitter became quite apparent by that point.  Cheryl filled the role quite nicely and dutifully.

When I was 10, I started to weasel my way into watching daytime soaps with Cheryl, her mom, and sometimes our other neighbor friend, at Cheryl's family's house.  Before that I had never been allowed to watch soaps at all, and had always been pushed out of the room whenever anyone (Cheryl or otherwise) had them on the t.v.  But I guess by the time I was 10, they started to get sick of telling me "no" all the time when I would beg and beg them, and they eventually kinda gave in and let me start hanging out while they were watching them.  Specifically the two soaps they were into were General Hospital and Days of Our Lives.  I never got super into General Hospital, but Days of Our Lives quickly became a daily obsession for me.  That may have had to do with the fact that it was on later than most of the others: 3pm.  I think the key was that it may have been on just late enough that I was able to regularly catch some of it when I would get home from school.  Though I honestly don't recall if my regular soap watching started during the school year or the summertime.