My kids usually come home and veg to PBS Kids and a snack after school.  Libby came home today and before she changed the channel, said, “Hey, there’s a show on called ‘Rachel Ray.’  Is it good?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never watched it,” I answered.

“But they’re talking about cooking!” She mentioned this because my primary function is cooking, I suppose.

“I don’t watch T.V. during the day.  It distracts me.  No talk shows, no soap operas…”

“What are soap operas?” she asked.

Gasp! Did my daughter — the granddaughter of my mother, the great-granddaughter of my grandmother — ask “What are soap operas?”

When I was a kid in the 1970s, soap opera theme music was the soundtrack of my life.  Mom and Grandma watched “All My Children,” “One Life to Live,” “General Hospital,” and “The Edge of Night.”  (Oh, I hated Raven!)

A coming-of-age moment in my life came when Mom and Grandma were watching “General Hospital” and trying to remember the name of the older man who had been Laura’s first love, whom she had killed in a fit of passion.  I popped my head up and told them his name, as nonchalantly as if I were reminding them what we had had for dinner the previous day. I was about 11. They looked at me like I was a cabbage that had suddenly shown signs of intelligence. Whatever they were thinking, I interpreted it as impressed. I was becoming a woman.

From then on, I became an expert on ABC soaps.  In the summertime I rarely missed a show.  I got updates from my mom on school days.  I read “Soap Opera Digest.” This was the late ’70s, early ’80s, a magical time for soaps. On “All My Children,” Erica was only on her third husband.  On “General Hospital,” it was the time of Luke and Laura, and the famous wedding, and then Laura dying the first time. So much to think about. So many hopes and tears. It was an important time for me, and for soapdom.

Then I went to college, and forgot all about soaps for two years.  I still caught up in the summertime, but I was realizing that the storylines just didn’t change that much

from day to day. In my third year of college, a roommate introduced me to “Days of Our Lives.” A whole new world!

Bo and Hope had already been together and apart and together and so on but Kayla and Patch were the really big news.  Every time he called her Sweetness, I melted.

When I started scheduling classes around “Days,” and when Patch died the first time in an explosion and my heart was broken, I realized I was addicted to this never-ending mess of stories. I gave it all up, and focused on other more realistic things, like novels.

So I don’t watch soaps anymore, and my kids don’t even know what they are. That’s a good thing.

Strangely enough, I turned on the noon news today to see what was happening with the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The news hadn’t begun yet, so I caught the end of “The Young and the Restless.”  (Did I mention I watched that one too?)  In five minutes I saw Jack, Nikki, Victor, Catherine… yep, I haven’t missed much in 20 years.

But guess who else is on “YR” these days?  Patch from “Days of Our Lives”! He’s 20 years older and no longer wearing a patch, but he looked good.  Fun to see an old crush.

David Hamilton, by the way. Laura killed David Hamilton.  It was kind of an accident, but he deserved it, the cad.