All My Children...gone?

While messing around on Yahoo!, my favorite site and homepage, I saw the headlines, "ABC cancels All My Children and One Life To Live" and my stomach dropped.  While I don't watch these two soap operas any more I still keep an eye on them, and if they too can be added to the list of canceled soaps then might not General Hospital, my fav of all of them, not be far behind?

All My Children was the first soap I ever watched.  I'm not sure how I got hooked on it, but I know it was against the wishes of my mother, a woman who never watched a soap in her life and thought them a waste of time and brain matter.  I can remember watching that soap at the age of nine when it was still only a half an hour show from 12:00 to 12:30 PM.  It was summer and I was swimming for the city's swim league.  My mother had forced me to join this team for physical activity and had arranged transportation with her friend's children.  They drove and this gave her some free time to pursue her own interests of golf, tennis and bowling.  I loved having the freedom, and so every day I was dropped off at my doorstep right before noon.  I would go inside and get out of my bathing suit.  Quickly I would run to the kitchen and make myself a sugar sandwich, another no-no in the world of mother, which consisted of a piece of bread full of sugar, folded in half.  Taking this downstairs I would sit on the magic carpet, eat my sugar sandwich, and watch All My Children.  At exactly 12:30 PM my mother would pull into the garage and I would turn off the tube and dust off the sugar remnants.  It was a glorious summer.

Of course school started again and that was the end of my watching the soap.  But somewhere along the way I kept abreast of it, eventually finding my way back to it, now an hour show.  I watched it in the summer.  It was my way of relaxing after swim practice, and if I missed a week or two?  Well, it was always easy to catch up as the storylines never moved too quickly.  By the time I entered high school I was a full fledged soap viewer.  Eventually Kelly and her sister Kathy put me on to One Life to Live and General Hospital, and much to my mother's dismay, I was hooked and taping all three shows every day.

When I started watching the soap Ruth and Joe Martin were the matriarchs, along with Phoebe Tyler.  The Martins had just taken in Tad, and his father, Ray Gardner, was creeping around causing trouble and raping Ruth.  Mona Kane was trying to keep her daughter, Erica in line.  Erica aborted her baby.  There was goody two shoes Tara Martin, Philip Brent, and Chuck Tyler.  I was enthralled with the stories.  They were like the book series I enjoyed reading, only they never ended.  I watched Jessie and Angie come of age.  I watched several actors become famous, the last being Kelly Ripa who I remember watching the first day she debuted as Haley Vaughn.  I watched the show until my late thirties when something annoyed me and I finally let it go.  I guess I have to own up to the fact that I'm one of the reasons it is being cancelled.

Television is rapidly changing and evolving, and while I enjoy some of these new reality based shows, I don't enjoy them to the point of shoving out the true oldies but goodies.  Word is that it All My Children will end September 2011 and be replaced by a cooking show.  Do we really need more of those? Each year I hesitate to even get involved in new shows because I don't want to be sucked in only to have the show cancelled.  Losing those characters always feels like losing a family member.  The one true, sure thing was soaps.  They kept ticking away, and for the most part veterans stayed on until death or retirement.  It was always there to count on.  Now they too are being sent out to pasture, and I for one find it a shame.