The Day the World Stopped Turning
A few weeks ago my mother's favorite soap opera, "As the World Turns" went off the air. When I first heard this was happening I was mildly disappointed. Even though I hadn't watched it in years it had been a part of my life since my birth. Mom used to feed me by it and then watch the rest of it while I napped. For her it went back much further than that. She began watching it in 1956 when it started. She thinks of all the people of Oakdale Illinois as her friends, even the characters whom she doesn't like. My NaNa (grandmother) watched it with her and it was hard for them to distinguish fantasy from the reality. When my brothers and I were old enough to understand this obsession we used to tease my mother that is, when we figured out she was talking about a tv show. Sometimes we'd hear Mom and NaNa talking and mistakenly think they were talking about real people. "Who died?" We'd ask. "Who doesn't know who their real father is? Are yo