I used to sit on her La-Z-Boy, eating her black licorice (which I hated, but swore that I loved simply because she did), watching soaps with her, because this is what was part of our routine. As a five year old child, I knew to equate Patti Austin and James Ingram's "Baby Come to Me" with Holly and Robert Scorpio, I knew that Adam Chandler was a force to be reckoned with, and Tina and Cord were too hot to last. My grandma would doze in her chair, and I would sit with my crossword puzzle, awaiting the theme song of General Hospital, which started with a mournful siren and not the silly 90210-esque character montages of today. It was a time of simplicity...being a child, being in the 1980s, thinking one could escape merely by watching escapist television. I think it is this fact that allowed me to justify watching these soaps for decades after this. As a teenager, I taped them every day on our VHS and watched them while i did my homework, my heart hurting for the love I had