Muffins with Mom - Life as a soap opera: Teen drama

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Have you ever thought about your life as being a soap opera? If I had to describe my life as a soap opera it would be a combination of All My Children, As the World Turns, and Days of Our Lives. Everyday could really involve a different drama.

Growing up, All My Children was my favorite soap opera. Now that I have children, I experience enough drama to have my own TV series. It’s not all bad, it’s just the things that happen As the World Turns.

The other day my fifteen-year-old son told me that he wanted to earn some money to buy a couple of things he wanted and to go to the movies. I thought that was quite noble of him so I wrote out a list of tasks for him to accomplish. The list was short enough that the items could have been completed within a couple of hours, or so I thought.

The next day when I returned home from work, only one of the tasks was completed. I dreaded asking my son the question, but I had to… “Why? Why didn’t you complete everything on the list?”

“I had football workouts and when I got home I was tired.” His answer was so genuine that one would almost be sympathetic toward him. Unless you knew the whole story. He had the entire day before workouts, get things done, but he chose to relax.

And that was just one day in our life as a soap opera.

On another occasion I had an opportunity to see my son in a different light. It was early evening and I was driving my son to an after school program. We saw two guys pushing an SUV, but not getting very far.

We drove past the guys at first because we only had a few minutes to get my son to his program on time. I glanced at my son and said, “Do you want to go back and help them?”

“We’ll be late if we go back. You know you like to be on time,” He said.

I turned the car around, pulled over to a safe spot in the parking lot area and we got out and helped push the vehicle. It was a short distance to the nearby gas station, but we reached a small incline. That day I had just picked my son up from football workouts, but he still had energy to push the vehicle.

As we rocked the truck a little another car approached the scene and used his car to push the truck the remaining distance into the gas station. The guys thanked us and we left feeling glad that we were able to help.

I was proud of my son for his role in helping someone in distress. It was a day in my life, as the world turned, that one of my children carried out a good deed.

Has your life ever felt like a soap opera?