Flashback Friday

Sweeps week is coming up, and that means that the daytime soaps will be pulling out all of the stops to get viewers to watch. Why, just yesterday, tornados hit Pine Valley and caused death and destruction to my favorite show, "All My Children." One of the commercials they've been running for a couple of weeks featured Dr. Jake Martin, a character on AMC, giving viewers reasons to tell their bosses for calling in sick yesterday and today so they could stay home and watch AMC. I'm not ashamed to say that even though I tape AMC everyday, if my office had been fully staffed, I would have entertained the thought of calling in sick to work so I could watch the tornados hit. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as staying home to watch something special on daytime TV.

As a kid, I guess I had a disadvantage when it came to staying home from school for no reason: my Grandmother (and Grandfather) lived with us, so they were in charge during the day while Mom and Dad were at work. Gram was of the adage that if you were too sick to go to school, then you were too sick to be up and around in the house watching your favorite shows on TV. When I was a kid and even as a teenager, there was no such thing as faking being sick to just stay home. Grandma could see right through it. And since she could see through it, I didn't even try it. Well, I tried it once, and it didn't work.

I was 11 or 12, and one of my favorite stars at the time (sorry, but I can't remember who it was) was going to be on the "Mike Douglas Show" that day. I so wanted to see them, so I devised a plan to fake being sick so I could stay home and watch the show. I figured that since Grandma always watched it, she'd let me lay on the couch and watch it while I was "sick." Wrong. She said that if I was too sick to go to school I was too sick to watch TV, so I spent the whole day in bed. Now, if I'd been more devious, I could have snuck and turned on the small TV in my bedroom and watched the show anyway, but even at a young age I knew Grandma was very smart and she would find out and bust me. Needless to say that was the only day that I ever faked being sick to stay home from school.