As the World Turns

Last week CBS killed off one of its stalwarts, the old soap opera As the World Turns. I was one who watched it, but it was long ago. I was there in the sixties when Lisa was a bad girl and when she married Bob and then John and then the next guy. I watched the babies go from birth to troubled teens in mysteriously few years. Soaps were addictive. They were planned to be. The end of one show would have us viewers anxiously awaiting the next day's episode. Then that show would just add to its complex and distorted human stories so we would have to hang on til the following day, and on and on and on it went. At some point in the early seventies, I got a grip and realized the soaps were playing too large a role in my life and stopped cold turkey, but while I watched, I was into them. I suppose I started with the CBS soaps because of my grandmother. The midday ones of Guiding Light and Search for Tomorrow were never missed, but when The Edge of Night started, that became her favorite, and mine, too of course. When I visited we couldn't wait until 4 o'clock when the drama came on. It did not have the longevity that ATWT did and its demise came early. Several years after I gave up soaps, I became a nurse, and then I heard stories that would make any fictional story pale in comparison. And I remember a co-worker from the eighties who would mutter under her breath "...as the world turns" when we were in the middle of a lot of craziness. I suppose it is a decent phrase that implies the consternation and acceptance of life on earth.