Daytime Drama...

"A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction..."

When I stay home from work and I remember to, I tune into my soaps. I live in NYC and I watch what I call my channel 7 joints... All My Children, One Life to Live and sometimes General Hospital.

It's not hard to get caught up on the goings on when you miss a couple of shows. The storylines are usually the same... romance, secret romance, attempts to destroy an existing or potential romance...

Also Cablevision, here in New York, has Soapnet so I can always catch missed episodes in the evenings... if I wanted to.

With so much going on... work... church... friends... social life... and my other shows, I hardly think about Soapnet, Erica Kane, Nicky/Vicky, Adam nor Chandler.

But you know... the workplace is the location for many budding, potential romances and just as those filmed and aired on TV daily, they are filled with DRAMA.

A little drama, I believe, is good for the soul. Library work, can be monotonous and there's nothing like a little speculation and love endeavor to shake up the boredom.

For instance there is this intrigue with a couple here at work. A supervisor and a subordinate. You have the supervisor, the female in this story. She's a cougar, crazy in love, head over heels. Then there's the subordinate, the male in this story. The younger, buffed up catch and he's running circles around his supervisor. They are both married to other people and trying to hide their trysts from everyone - their spouses and the fellow staffers - except... everyone knows. Drama.

2 years ago when they would run off with each other and sneak into dark quiet places where there are no cameras, everyone was tuned into their rendezvous. Now it's 2 years later and they're still up to their antics so much so hardly no one is interested anymore.

Except the devoted few.

When I used to go to Dominican salons, their TVs were always channeled to Telenovelas and even with my limited Spanish speaking and hearing, I would get caught up in their sagas.

But you know what? Most Telenovelas have a limited run. After about 120 episodes, the saga ends.

This is how I feel about this daytime drama at the job. My favorite soap opera characters don't even exist to me if I am not tuned in. Like I said before, I have much on my plate than worrying about my Ch. 7 joints or the drama at the job. But those devoted few keep that 120 episodic on-the-job saga going for an extra 400 days! And counting...

"... thus the shows were aimed at and consumed by a predominantly female audience."

My dad worked evenings and nights and I would watch the soaps with him over the summers or when out of school. We never had "Post All My Children" chats or "What do you think will be next with Asa?" talks. Back before judge shows went up against the soaps or Cable TV emerged, all there was to watch was soap operas so it wasn't weird that he watched them. However I do find it weird when men keep daytime drama whirling.

Now my best "girlfriends" have been men and what I mean by that is that my best confidantes and advice givers. But when I want to shoot the crap, men bash and gutter gossip, I head to my catty women friends not the dude who knows the ins and outs of the latest dish. Or better yet, the dude who keeps the drama alive runs to me... OH!

Like I said, perhaps our work drives us to sheer boredom and we all, men and women, crave something so that we're not nodding off at our desks. But in the spirit of telenovelas, can we create another storyline? New characters? And most of all... an ending...?