I Can't Complain by Elinor Lipman Read Free Book Online

uncanny. My father calls it “As the World Squirms.”
    1964–1968: Luckily, Title IX has not yet passed, so there are no sports teams for girls to keep me late at school. I rush home, cutting through Bruce Levine’s yard every day to make it in time to watch my favorite soap,
The Doctors.
Maggie Fielding, MD, and chief of staff Matt Powers—will they ever
ever
realize that they are in love and made for each other? After that I watch the less cerebral
Another World
from its premiere episode. All I remember now is that Michael Ryan playing John Randolph needed a better-fitting pair of contact lenses and that I didn’t like that poseur Rachel and always rooted for Jacqueline Courtney, who, as Alice Matthews, never stopped loving Steve Frame. I experience my first remote locations: St. Croix. Because I am not allowed to watch television on school nights, I squeeze in as much as possible before 5 P.M.
    Real-life dinner conversation slips into soap opera updates for my working mother. My father says, unfailingly, “Who’s Brock? Who’s Nora? Who is Dennis Carrington?” My sister and I say, “They’re on
The Doctors.
He’s on
Another World.
” He shakes his head slowly, eyes downcast, and says, “I can’t believe my wife and daughters are discussing the lives of people who don’t exist.”
    September 27, 1965–June 24, 1966: My sophomore year in high school, I add to my afternoon lineup the brand-new, soon-to-be-short-lived teenage surfer soap,
Never Too Young,
starring
Leave It to Beaver
’s Tony Dow. My father calls this one “Too Young to Know Any Better.”
    Spring 1968: I get into college anyway.
    1969–1983: I suspend soap opera watching while in college and later into full-time employment. In fact, I am a little disdainful of my fellow students who congregate in the living room of Simmons Hall to watch
All My Children
and
General Hospital.
Who are Luke and Laura?
    July 1975: I marry Robert Austin, newly minted MD. Unlike doctors on daytime drama, he never once encounters a patient suffering from amnesia.
    1982: I give birth to my son.
    1983: Twice a week a very nice young woman comes in the afternoon to babysit while I go to find a quiet place to write. She tells me, “I can come either before one P.M. or after two, but not in between.” I guess this has to do with another job or lunch or a bus schedule. Finally, she confides that the one hour of
All My Children
is sacred. I stop asking, “How about coming at one thirty?”
    Late 1983: I start watching
All My Children.
Favorite story line: star-crossed Nina and Cliff. Love the word “Glamorama” and later get my hair cut at a salon in Northampton, Massachusetts, named that as an homage.
    Valentine’s Day 1984: I hear from a friend who works in admissions at Harvard that many coworkers are avid
All My Children
fans. They brown-bag their lunches on this day and bring in a TV to watch Jenny and Greg’s wedding as if it’s a moon launch.
So much for the Ivy League,
I think. My other favorite firsthand report of Harvard meets
AMC:
an applicant comes in for an interview. The admissions officer, a guy even, asks him if there’s anything interesting about himself. The boy says, “Well, it might sound silly, but my hometown is where the outdoor shots for a fictional town, Pine Valley, in a soap opera called
All My Children
are filmed.” Thrilled and breathless, the admissions officer says, “Can you excuse me for a minute?” He leaves, tells a coworker, then returns to the interview after he composes himself.
    August 1985: I attend my cousin Laura’s wedding in Central Park. There, at the hot hors d’oeuvre table, I ask a fellow guest if his wife went to high school with Laura because she looks familiar. He asks modestly, “Do you watch a program called
All My Children
?” I gulp; try to look only mildly cognizant of such an entity. “Um—why?” I ask. “Because she plays a character named Midge.” I love Midge, who plays a teenage sidekick in