Confessional

So I have to come clean about something. 

A really long time ago, I was an addict.  And it was pretty bad.  I had to have my fix at least five days a week and when I couldn't get it on the weekends, I found a new way to get it.  Now, almost 20 years into recovery, I'm starting to feel myself slipping up so I need to be accountable here before it all goes south once more.

Twenty years ago, I was addicted to "Days of Our Lives". 

It started out innocently enough.  My mother watched it and during the summer months, when I didn't have school, I started watching it with her.  Then once school would start up again, I would make her tape record it for me. Yes, you heard that right.  It was in the days before VCRS.  Then Robyn and I would listen to the audio tapes any time we could.  Once VCRS came out, we were in heaven; we could watch the episodes and actually SAVE the ones we didn't want to part with.  And dare I say, I still have some VHS tapes upstairs from twenty years ago?  I do.  I can't bring myself to part with them.

DOOL was the reason I wanted to marry a Brit as I was hopelessly in love with the character of Shane Donovan.  Robyn and I went a step further in high school and started writing fanfiction about the soap; I have a closet full of notebooks upstairs (Again, before the age of computers!).

As I grew older, and storylines became more ridiculous (Marlena possessed by a demon?  C'mon!) I stopped watching.  It was difficult as there are no twelve step programs for soap opera addicts, but I did it.  I cut loose from the show and have barely not looked back since. 

But now I find myself slipping and I swear, it was all completely innocent.  I started working out.  See, they have these big televisions at the Y and as I go right after work at 12:30 and DOOL starts at 1:00...well, it is up there on one of the screens in Close Captioning.  But I kept my iPod on and tried to ignore it.  Then I would occasionally chance a glance at the television set. What I discovered was that like 80% of the characters who were on when I used to watch it are still there! 

That's when it started getting bad.  I started reading the Close Captioning when I was on the treadmill and the elliptical.  But I swore to myself I would never go back to DVRing it.  Nope.  Never.  Watching words at the Y was innocent enough; I don't even get to see the whole thing!

Today, I unplugged my headphones from my iPod and plugged them into the volume/channel control for the television and listened to it.

DVRing is only a matter of time without intervention.