Days of Our Lives and Defrosted Peanut Butter

Days just got renewed for another two years and they’re forty five! May I have a what what?

It’s been a loooong time since I have watched, but I was a hardcore fan for years and years. It all started when the school nurse sent me home for being “sick” (I often fell ill around PE time) and my mom, fed up with my wussy ass, refused to come get me. I called my grandma instead. That was the beginning of a serial pattern of ditching class and hiding out with Siti and her two sisters. Cards, peanut butter, and Days of Our Lives. The best education a young gay boy could get. Well, the best peanut butter anyway. Turns out when you buy jars cheap and store them in your freezer for a decade to emergency defrost them when your drama queen grandson develops an addiction to your stories, peanut butter takes on a magical texture. Or something.

The addiction lasted all the way through high school and well into my twenties. I even check in now, occasionally. I had it on the other day while I was flipping around and saw that Hope is still on that show! She looks just like she did when she was 30. Except for her neck. That thing shows her real age like a tree stump and it comforts me. My neck was adorable back when I started watching that shit, and it’s nice to know that Hope doesn’t get off scott free in the neck department while I’m stuck with Chicken Run 2 playing in a loop right below my FACE. When are they inventing wattle surgery? It’s like flying cars. It seems like those things should be a reality by now.

I haven’t been a regular watcher for a long time, but there were some fantastic storylines back in the day. Marlena getting possessed by the devil and John suddenly finding out that he’s actually a priest was pretty good…

And so was that story about Hope being kidnapped and brainwashed by Stefano. I couldn’t remember it all clearly, so I did a little about.com research on it (very No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, I know):

“During Hope’s missing years when she was presumed dead, Stefano DiMera transformed her into art thief Princess Gina Von Amberg, who once had a passionate affair with John Black before he came to Salem. In 1999, Stefano transformed Hope back into Gina by activating the microchip in her neck. During John and Marlena’s honeymoon that same year, John was kidnapped and held captive on Gina’s submarine and brainwashed into his former identity as Gina’s lover. Gina (Hope) and John made love, but after John escaped, he remembered nothing about the passionate incident because of the microchip in his neck. Soon afterwards, Gina (Hope) slept with Stefano.”

And that was just the first paragraph. You can read the whole thing here. My all-time fave, though, was the Susan Banks storyline. The writers gave trannyish looking evil Kristen a sweet, hicky, dorky lookalike who talked to Elvis’ ghost and thought he was the father of her baby. Then the dork had a twin sister that was a nun. Eileen Davidson played it to the hilt, and I will forever be a fan of hers for that performance. My Siti is gone now, but her joy in super crappy television lives on inside of me. Happy Bday, Days! I’ll always love you!

***When looking for Susan clips, I came upon a video of some random girl wasted at a party imitating her. I do that! You see? There are other weirdos like you in the world. Well, like me. You know what I mean. Whoever you are, girl, you made my night.

I want peanut butter.