My closet soap addiction

I can't believe I'm about to admit this, but why not? Here it goes. I love Days of our Lives and I have for over twenty years. Go ahead and laugh, giggle, snicker, or whatever else floats your boat. I can't help it. From the days of setting programs on the VCR to record it while I was in high school, to watching it on Sprint TV when I didn't have cable, to streaming it from Peacock as I do now, the show has long since been a welcome escape from a stressful reality.

It all started when I was a small child. At different times my mother, brother, and sister all watched the show. I was not the slightest bit interested until I was in high school, but when it did catch my attention, it was easy to get hooked since I was already familiar with the key players. The character that caused me to start watching continued to be my favorite throughout the years who in my opinion, was the most legendary daytime villain of all time, the infamous Stefano DiMera.

That was the name that I remember being uttered by my family members with such a fond frustration. No matter how hard the heroes of the show tried, no one could ever catch Stefano. In fact, the one time that I recall him being arrested was actually a ruse to further his own agenda. Then there were the countless times that he was pronounced to be dead, only to resurface a few weeks or months later. It was as if the actor, the late Joseph Mascolo, would just take an extended vacation every other year and it would be written into the script. Such a penchant earned his character the other name he was known as, "The Phoenix." Just as the mythical bird would rise from the ashes, reborn and stronger than before, Stefano always came back from his "deaths" several steps ahead of his adversaries.

The many storylines that revolved around the Phoenix were often far-fetched and unrealistic, requiring any viewer to imagine a world where the impossible is possible. Stefano's bread and butter scheme was to kidnap a victim and brainwash him or her into doing his bidding. He was also quite skilled at creating dopplegangers of the many people he interacted with, each time for different reasons. Also, whenever it seemed his luck had run out, it would often be revealed that one of the good guys was actually just one of his moles that was present in the leadership of every country imaginable. As a fourteen year old with an active imagination, the extreme lack of believability was an absolute delight. I remember being inspired at times by Stefano's ingenuity and outside-the-box thinking, not to become a master criminal by any means, but to face even the most unsolvable of life's problems with a determination to beat the odds and find a solution.

So hear I am, a twenty-five year fan of Days of our Lives, shamelessly admitting my guilty pleasure for anyone to read. Over these years I have seen many actors and actresses come and go and come back again. Characters are recast multiple times and some actors even return to the show as a different character. I've seen villains reform into model citizens and vice versa. But despite the inevitable changes that I've seen as the sands fall through the hourglass, Days of our Lives continues to be an invaluable escape that I look forward to at the end of each day of my life, well, at least Monday through Friday anyway.