Life Lessons from General Hospital (A Soap Opera Rerun)

Editor’s note: Most weeks, I have too much on my plate and struggle to juggle it all. This Friday, I found myself without a shiny new blog post and no time to write one (nor, quite frankly, the desire). So instead I offer this little gem, which originally ran on August 6, 2011.

I have watched General Hospital for most of my life. It started back in 1982, when my sister would watch it while babysitting me after school. Through the years, it’s been like an old friend—sometimes the show makes me laugh; sometimes it makes me cry; mostly, it makes me wonder how to tell this old friend that I’ve grown up and it hasn’t and we don’t really need to be friends any more.

In all fairness, GH has taught me a few things about life. For instance:

• As long as you dress like a Vogue model and have fabulous hair, you’re ready for anything. Honestly, I’ve seen these women survive train wrecks, hotel fires, murder sprees, and car crashes (sooo many car crashes) with their perfect coifs and Jimmy Choos intact. So now, when I’m preparing for a hiking trip or a kayak ride, I like to run right out and get a hot oil treatment and new heels.
  
• Life is easier if you have a cool name. This has been proven time and time again on GH. “Frisco” was a secret agent married to a Mayan princess. “Decker” was a sexy grifter who drove a Harley. “Mikkos” was a fabulously rich super-villain who put North America in deep freeze in the middle of July. The people with normal names, like Benny, Tony, Casey, and Jesse? Dead, dead, space alien, and dead. I fully understand that “Stacey” is not nearly as cool as “Frisco.” It is, however, awfully close to “Casey,” which means I might turn out to be from outer space. Really, I need to dump this show.    
• Nothing says ‘I love you’ like giving your fiancée a lug nut for an engagement ring/buying your girlfriend a duck/raping a teenager on a dance floor. I wish I was making this crap up. And did that rape lead to a socially responsible, sensitive handling of a victim’s emotional turmoil and eventual victory in court of her attacker? Heck no. That rape scene led to the most popular couple on daytime television (Luke and Laura, we salute you).
• People won’t think you’re a tramp if you have four children by four different men, even if the guy you’re married to isn’t the father of any of them. See, this was an eye-opener to me. Because that sounds kind of slutty to me. But Elizabeth Webber is considered a saint—a saint!—on this stupid show. (For those of you who watch GH, here is the scorecard: Cameron—father is Zander; Jake—father is Jason; miscarried child—father is Jax; Aidan—father presumed to be Nicolas, Lucky’s brother. Once this broke up Elizabeth and Lucky for good (I wish!) the father turned out to be Lucky.) To me, that sounds like a slut, but this woman walks on water while holding Mother Teresa’s hand as far as the others on the show are concerned.
• There’s always a new crisis waiting around the corner. Sure, their crises are a little different than mine—psychopaths kidnapping the local mob boss’s children, forged paternity tests, serial killers stalking the local mob boss’s right hand man. My biggest challenges tend to be keeping the house clean, finding time to write, and not eating an entire chocolate mousse cake all by myself even though I really want to. But then again, I’m not married to the local mob boss. I suppose if I was, it would spice up my life a little bit.

So you can see, there are some benefits to watching soap operas. For instance, I get to release a lot of anger calling Elizabeth names every time she comes on the screen. And . . . um . . .

. . . all right. I’ll admit it. It is definitely time for me to break up with General Hospital.

I will. I swear.

Editor’s post-note: I have since broken up with the show, and can no longer stand by the accuracy of this post. For example, I don’t know how many children Elizabeth has these days, or if their fathers are still who the show said they were in 2011. Much like real life, nothing ever stays the same. Except for the bit about the chocolate mousse cake. I still stand by that statement.