All My Children: Sublime Ridiculous Perfection

Remember when Natalie was trapped in the well and her twin sister Crazy Janet From Another Planet pretended to be Natalie, then seduced Uncle Porkchop and became pregnant with his child? Or when Haley married the man who raped her (the same man that Janet later killed with the tire iron)? Or when Stuart pretended to be Adam but we always knew it was Stuart because one side of his collar was askew and his hair was messy? Or when Bianca and Babe gave birth at the deserted cabin and Babe stole Bianca's baby? Or when Donna and Chuck were stranded in that cave during the blizzard and reunited but Donna was still married to Palmer and didn't know he had a vasectomy so when she got pregnant she thought it was his? Or when Crystal invited all the bikers over and got Adam all liquored up and they admitted their love? Or when Tad fell off the bridge with Billy Clyde Tuggle on the morning of the wedding and we all thought he was dead but he washed up somewhere in California on a winery where he happened to be a dead ringer for the winery owner's long lost son Ted and both Tad and Ted returned to Pine Valley two years later and interrupted Dixie's romance with that much younger man Brian who was really in love with Haley... deep breath...

I still get a little misty when I remember Tad and Dixie reuniting on Christmas Eve under their star. I continue to occasionally use my Carney Red Lipstick and fondly recall Myrtle. I named my best cat Haley. My daughter and Bianca were born at the same time. I had a party when Susan Lucci finally won her Emmy.

There was never a time in my life when All My Children wasn't on the day's agenda. Since I was tall enough to reach the dial on the television set, I was drawn to bad girls like Liza, Cecily, and Greenlee. Misunderstood, smart, beautiful, usually rich; they never seem to learn the hard lessons but they eventually get their men (even though poor Liza had to share him with her mother). I loved the scandal and mischief of Erica, Mona, Jeremy, Cliff, Donna, Lily, Jeff, Charlie, Cindy, Mark, Eleen, Palmer, Bennie, Phil, Daisy, Dimitri, Tara, Jenny, Greg, Nina, the Fusion elevator (is anyone ever going to fix that thing? or maybe put in a set of stairs?), Kent, Nick, Mike Roy, Jackson, Jessie, Angie, Nico, the not-so-secret secret hallways of the Chandler Mansion, Ruth, Leo, Hillary, Bianca, Amanda, Jake, Kendell, Ryan, Zach, J.R. (remember when we used to call him Junior?), the jangling of Opal's bracelets, Kate, Joe, Bonkers, Phoebe, and even Evil Dr. David without whom so many dead characters wouldn't return to life. There are more names, some forgotten, most beloved.

Before we had VCRs and TiVo, I'd carefully gauge the events of Pine Valley and (yes Mom, I admit this publicly) conveniently wake up sick on the mornings of important events, like when Liza played Jenny's sex tape at prom, or when Nina and Cliff got married (again), or when Tom and Brook's daughter Laura was hit and killed by a drunk driver. When I was a summer girl I'd set lunch out for the kids I nannied and together we'd watch (afterwards I'd gently explain that Natalie didn't mean to kill Erica's half-sister Silver). In college I scheduled classes before noon so that I'd never miss an episode. When I lived overseas, my dad sent me VHS tapes so I could catch up, and my friend K sent me cassette recordings of her reenacting vital scenes. Her imitation of psychically gifted Jeremy was dead-on, "Something has happened to Erica!"  At my current job, I made friends when I discovered a collection of coworkers who escaped to the All My Children lounge and daily shared a meal and the show. I've done plenty of bonding over a love of all things Pine Valley.

The shows were always entertaining. But they also confronted social issues and educated, then challenged viewers to approach those issues with compassion.  Be it birth control, abortion, autism, prostitution, AIDS, gay and lesbian characters, cochlear implants, drug abuse and alcoholism, rape, adoption, child abuse, divorce, affairs, and Iraq War veterans returning home with scars we can see and scars they keep hidden.

There is a rubber chicken that hangs with my pots and pans above our butcher block. That chicken represents the Chicken Shack and the chicken costume that Tad wore when he proposed to Dixie. It is ironic that my rubber chicken finally disintegrated over the summer, and this morning I woke to find the head detached from the body. Seriously? The Universe doesn't need to remind me. Eva LaRue (a.k.a. Maria) said it best, "I don't know that there is a way to ever say goodbye to Pine Valley."

Today I'll eat a bowl of cheese puffs to memorialize the storage bin where trapped Stuart and Marion fell in love. I'll admire Greenlee's wedding top hat that I received as a gift years ago. And I'll pour a glass of sparkling wine and toast to my Pine Valley Pennsylvania friends one final time.