I remember when I was 8 or 9 years old (about the time of Lois/Ned/Katherine and Sonny/Brenda), when my mom always called the ever-so-intelligent Nickelodeon shows I watched "drivel." So I started teasing her about her "drivel"--she was always watching those dumb soap operas when I came home from school (at the time, my mom was doing home daycare, but naptime coordinated well with GH time!).

Then I started to ask her about it. She introduced me to Sonny as "A mobster, but a good guy." Of course, this was absurd! *G* She introduced me to hating Katherine and loving Lois. I remember Katherine with Ned in a jacuzzi or something, and my mom saying that "He's a good guy, but he's married to two women. He really loves the cool one--the one with the long nails. He had to marry the blonde one." She even explained (after all, I had a lot of questions about this curiously calm, dimpled man) the situation that he and Lois were taking his jet, since he was secretly rich, but didn't want to tell her because she would discover...you get the idea. I vaguely remember watching Lucy strip at the Nurses Ball, but all I can really remember is her tossing her gloves.

The next thing I remember is Thanksgiving '95, watching GH's Thanksgiving episode (complete with Lucy and Sigmund). That was the first time my mom and I both told dad, "Shhh! We're watching General Hospital!" at the same time. This would become a theme in our lives. *G*

The next thing I remember is late summer of '97. I remember my mom explaining to me Emily's situation as I giggled at her trying to fly off the roof. She explained Sarah and Lizzie, the two sisters who hated each other; Brenda, the model who had been left at the altar by the good mobster with the dimples; and all of the other characters I would grow to love (or hate).

In October or November of '97 my friend Sarah Spencer (ooh, how cool, she got Lucky's last name!) and I started talking about soap operas in homeroom one day. That was it. I was hooked.

Within a month I started taping every day. February 1998, I started watching PC. By the end of the school year, Sarah and I had hooked two more friends, one of whom hooked another. This became a pretty big deal. We all owned (or shared) copies of the GH CD, the trivia book, the scrapbook, subscriptions to one of the soap magazines, and several videos--this is how my friends and I, who weren't born until 83-85 know about GH's history from the beginning. I started posting to rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc three weeks before my eighth grade graduation. I attended Super Soap Weekend in November of Freshman year, and Fan Club Weekend last summer.

Currently I watch GH and PC, as do two other friends of mine. I post on ratsa. I am not quite as addicted to soaps as I once was. I do live a life outside of soaps; it's amazing how much I do, while I still catch up on soaps late at night.

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