A pregnant pause, page 2

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It's hard to explain what hooked us. There were no shut-ins on the show with whom we could identify (although it was clear that nobody ever went outside -- the so-called exteriors, like the city park, couldn't have fooled a child.) Nor do I think we stumbled across some momentary Golden Age, during which "All My Children" transcended its humble roots and turned into Shakespeare. No, this was business as usual in Pine Valley. Jack was flirting with Laurel, who would later be his wife. Erica and Dmitri were resisting their mutual attraction, Adam was winning Gloria's heart, and Tad was recovering from a long bout of amnesia and returning home. We knew nothing of how these stories began. This made every twist of televised fate seem arbitrary, and that suited us fine, since we felt the same way about our own situation. And perhaps we were drawn to the comical resiliency of these people; they coped with every disaster in the book and bounced back within a week or so, unless, like Trevor's wife whose name I can't recall, they were slated to depart the series and were allowed to flatline a few days after a car accident.

Our immersion grew deeper and deeper. It was no longer a matter of simply watching the show. We prided ourselves on knowing the name of every character in the opening sequence -- which had the camera panning over an ersatz photo album--and gleaning bits of backstory. We found ourselves talking about them. Like real friends, which they were rapidly becoming, we loved even their flaws. Laurel's little peccadillo of forging checks, for example, struck us as poignant, even heartwarming. Did Palmer fake a heart attack in order to bring Opal back into line? We didn't mind, and given the ethical calculus of daytime television, we knew he would have a genuine heart attack later on to balance the books. We forgave Edmund his temper, and middle-aged Dixie her penchant for teenage lovers.

I'm not sure what marked the high-water point of our addiction. One night we sat up in bed and made Top Ten lists of the characters we would be interested in sleeping with, and these yielded some surprises. Dixie wasn't really my type, yet she was a strong contender -- perhaps I had a soft spot for her work as a patient's advocate at the hospital. And despite that little scar next to his mouth, or because of it, Dmitri topped my wife's list ("I fell for him, " she told me by way of explanation. "It's corny, but I did.") There was also an occasion a month after the birth of our baby, when we both dove to the bottom of a swimming pool and did imitations of our favorite characters, each challenging the other to guess the identity purely on the basis of mime. I was just about to figure out her take on Edmund when I ran out of air and was forced to surface again.

As we did, eventually, from "All My Children" itself. Our baby was born, my wife rose from her bed, and the crisis passed. We continued to watch the show for several months afterward, but now it became clear to us that we were spending a little too much time in Pine Valley. The need to escape into that brightly-lit universe, with its dated haircuts and recombinant couples, tapered off. And finally we pulled the plug and stopped watching. I don't think I've seen an episode for almost two years, and if I tuned in today I'd probably be stumped by many faces in the ersatz photo album. Still, the show has left its mark on me. When I see those familiar features on the cover of a soap-opera magazine ("A Tad Confused?"), or when one of the actresses escapes from Pine Valley to portray, say, Annette Funicello in a TV movie, I'm filled with the oddest sense of deja vu: scenes from my life and their lives flash before my eyes, and half the time I have trouble telling them apart.