Saying Goodbye to All My Children Because I Only Have One Life To Live

Wow!  I heard the news today.  All My Children and One Life to Live are being cancelled.  I haven't watched soaps since my college days and I'm a little embarrassed to admit I ever watched them at all, but still they were a part of my television diet growing up.  How did that happen? Well, as the the youngest of 5 girls I wanted to be grown and sit up under my big sisters during hot summer afternoons when I should've been outside playing hot peas and butter. So I watched All My Children go from a half-hour to one-hour show and Detective Ed Hall be a positive rep for black men on daytime tv.

It's amazing when I look back and remember how iconic the character Erica Kane was for urban black girls in my day.  She was the epitome of womanhood for many a sister.  Playing games, using her sex and sex appeal to get whatever she wanted, disposing of men without an after thought, running her own business empire.  Basically doing whatever the hell she wanted and dressing fierce all the while. I never really bought into that whole image, for me it was just entertainment.  But I have to wonder now if those shows, in any small way, left any lasting impact on how I saw life then and see the world today.  Maybe it was just silly entertainment.  A way to distract me and other women, and some men, from dealing with the very real life they had in front of them.  Just some waste-of-time fantasy, some "imagine what it would be like to live fly like that" BS.  Then again that "silly entertainment" wasn't so harmless after all.  I don't think life has to be all serious all the time.  We need some let loose, some silliness and mindless BS at times.  It's a coping mechanism too.  But too much, even more than a little, isn't good for our discipline or ability to cope with our reality at hand.

So I say goodbye to two daytime serials that had me on the edge of my seat way back when.  Before life got serious and time for pretend ended.  I say farewell to Dorian Lord's fly stylist, Angie & Jessie, Greg & Jennie and yes, to Ms. Erica Kane.