So Long Springfield

I know you'll all think I'm a bit loony when I tell you that I've spent the better part of September in mourning. No, no one has passed. No one is ill. My husband isn't leaving me yet. I am in mourning for Guiding Light. Guiding Light the television show. . If you happen to see me around 3:00 each weekday afternoon, you'll probably find me crying. Over a television show.

See, CBS has decided it's in their best interest to cancel the show I have adored for over thirty years to replace it with a remake of Let's Make a Deal. Hey, I LOVE Let's Make a Deal too, but on Game Show Network with Monty Hall and all that retro 70's stuff, not at 2:00 in place of The Lewises, Spauldings, and Coopers.

I started watching Guiding Light around 1981, I was in the sixth grade I think. Don't try to do the math it will hurt you. And scare you. For my 41st birthday, I'm having my favorite show cancelled. Good times. Anyway, I spent many nights that summer with a friend who along with her mother were addicted to the show. Having no other option, but to sit and watch with them, I began liking the show as well. The first story line I saw was two high school couples going to the prom, and being 12ish and just beginning to like boys and school dances just on my horizon, I was hooked. Oh, Phillip....how I loved you.

For the longest time, I was going to name my children Hart and India because I'd heard them on the show. Can you imagine?

My grandmother lived with us at that time and I was never home when she was watching her show of choice, Days of Our Lives, but I made it home just in time every day to see Guiding Light. She started watching it with me. My mom laughed at us. Eventually, though, she watched it too. My Granny died in 1982. I was out of school for a week watching it by myself.

We moved to West Virginia in 1984. We left everything and everyone behind. For a month I knew no one, but Reva and Josh kept me company until some future friends knocked on my door.

I frequently skipped my last period class to sit in my boyfriend's basement to watch the show. He thought we were going there to make out before his mom got home. HA. Got that boyfriend hooked on it too. When we reconnected as friends five years later, we did it over show recaps over the phone.

I never scheduled a college course at 3:00. On Fridays, I'd watch before beginning another drunken weekend. My roommate would always sit and watch while waiting for me. She died in 1999 right before I got married. I hadn't talked to her in a few years. I wonder if she was still watching.

When I taught, I'd get home just in time to catch the last half hour. Those last six months I worked, I'd come home and head straight to the recliner with my hand on my belly the entire time. My son seemed to like it too.

Maybe he missed it when he spent a month in the NICU. I didn't though, because watching it every day before I made the second drive of the day for the evening shift of force-feeding/staring in awe/professing all my love to my pitiful looking newborn, helped me through the longest time of my life.

For the past eightish years, Guiding Light has seen me through colic, teething, defiance, the terrible twos and threes and fours, sleepless nights (thank you, Tivo), a nasty neighborhood, and MIL visits. I was watching when they called about my mom's heart attack and I was glued to the screen while I was left alone in that waiting room while she had her surgery.

I don't know what I'll do every day without my Springfield family. I'm so very sad. Over a television show.

I still look for my childhood friend on Facebook now and then and wonder if she still watches. Watched. I'd like to thank her for introducing me to my favorite daily weekly pleasure.

I don't know how what I'd have done without it.