Dean Poling
“Are you talking about real people or people from a soap opera?”
As a boy, I often asked my mom and grandmother this question. It wasn’t always easy to tell.
Not that my mom and grandmother, whom I called NanNan, were gossips, but people in families talk about things happening around them. But Mom and NanNan often talked about the people from their soap operas. Their programs.
Their favorite program was “The Guiding Light.”
NanNan listened to “The Guiding Light” back in its radio days and watched it from its earliest TV days. In my early childhood, Mom watched the show’s broadcast every weekday afternoon.
They watched other soap operas, mostly the ones on CBS. Soap operas that still exist and some that have come and gone: “Secret Storm,” “As the World Turns,” “The Edge of Night,” but “The Guiding Light” remained their favorite.
Later, when my sister and I were older, Mom went to work. She went to work at about the same time as the advent of the VCR. Mom decided she had only time to record one soap opera and watch it later in the evening. She chose “The Guiding Light.”
So, Mom and NanNan would get together and talk about these people: Who married who, who was cheating on who, how a character left the show as a small child and returned six months later as a college student, how a character had returned from the dead, or had amnesia, or had married every man from father to brothers in a family, or had been married nine times, or had been paralyzed, or had overcome being paralyzed, or had been pretending to be paralyzed, or how they didn’t like the new actor playing an established character formerly played by another actor, or how would a character react now that she had re-married but the man she truly loved had returned from the dead ...
Mom and NanNan discussed these events. To a youngster, suddenly catching part of this conversation, overhearing a snippet of these incredible scenarios, I had to stop and ask, Who are ya’ll talking about?
My grandfather would often jump forward, demanding the identities of these poor individuals caught in such intrigue.
They explained the characters on their soap operas. Through the years, as I aged, the question changed: “Are you talking about real people or people from a soap opera?”
The question had to be asked, because you never could tell.
They talked about the people of “The Guiding Light” as if they were real people.
Mom and NanNan were not the type of fans who believed soap operas real. They knew they were stories ... their “programs,” as NanNan called them. But they enjoyed these characters. They watched them for years, for decades, for lifetimes.
So, have I, in a way. I never really watched it, but growing up hearing about it, or seeing it on television, I’ve followed “The Guiding Light” since my birth.
Gathering for family get-togethers, or visits, I caught up on the show just from overhearing my Mom and NanNan’s conversations.
This Friday, “The Guiding Light” goes off the air, canceled after more than 70 years due to slumping ratings.
It is only a program. Its characters were works of melodramatic fiction. But the part such shows plays in people’s lives is real, the sharing such shows can bring to friends, family, a mother and daughter is genuine. I’ve seen it. I lived it. A soap opera may have unbelievable relationships but it can kindle deeper relationships in the real world.
My NanNan passed last fall. She was 95. Mom mentioned how much NanNan would have missed “The Guiding Light.”
I know my Mom will miss it, too. She’ll miss it partly because she loves those characters. She’ll miss it mostly because it’s another part of NanNan that’s gone.
Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times assistant managing editor.
