Contraband cartoons

As a school kid in Needham, life wasn't easy -- everyday, teacher gave me a lecture on my bad handwriting, and donated free pencils to make it legible. I dreamed in the classroom -- looking outside the class window at a wooden ship in the yard, dreaming on being a pirate on that ship. Just like Daffy Duck.

But I never got to be Daffy, stayng back in school for handwriting improvement lessons. At 2:15pm, I'd get off the the school bus at home, hoping Mom would have a friend over. If she did, hooray! she's not watching General Hospital, and I can watch cartoons. If they got drunk, even better, it gave me 2 more hours of cartoons.

So desperate I was -- if mom watched GH, I'd go upstairs to try and fix our other TV in our playroom, coined the "Batcave." The piece of trash never worked; now that I think about it, I'm not even sure if it was a real TV or just a toy. But it did train me into a perfect handyman.

At home, we did everything a New England kid did -- collect baseball cards, get a penny a day as pocket money, call the kid Berry names like Strawberry and Mulberry, and watch wrestling on TV. That was the only connection we had with TV.

And of course, wondering how Mom could even watch something like GH -- that was the other TV connection.

The flashback came a few days back when I saw a lady named Melissa Reeves on the cover of San Francisco Chronicle's TV guide, a soap star of "Days of our Lives." I asked my roommate whether she saw it.

"I used to see it 20 years ago," she said, hinting a slight smile.

Would she understand the storyline of the show today?

"Oh yes, I would. Melissa Reeves has been on the show forever."

Would Mom understand GH's storyline today? I doubt it. She's now into watching wrestling. OK, just kidding, but she hasn't seen GH in a while.

But this little conversation bought back my haunted past -- of how soaps denied me of cartoons. That also happens whenever I pass Massachusetts General Hospital.