A time of your life when you named your son Ridge
GROWING up on the Cape Flats, watching Days of Our Lives and The Bold and the Beautiful are part of the everyday rituals.
Our mothers were so engrossed in these shows that we weren’t allowed to change the channel so, by default, the whole family watched.
These characters were household names, we loved them and loved to hate them.
So much so that there was a surge of kids in the late ’80s and early ’90s being named after them.
It was believed that if you had a son and you wanted him to grow up to be handsome, successful and have a full head of beautiful black hair, you had to name him Ridge or Eric.
In the earlier seasons mothers still named their daughters Brooke, until she became the character who didn’t wear a “brooke” much.
Days of Our Lives gave us “the scariest moment in TV history” when Marlena became possessed by the devil.
We watched for weeks as this tanned-skinned lady had bright yellow eyes, and because of this every coloured girl with light eyes was known as Marlena.
Nicknames were such a strong form of identity in our community that if they called you one of these characters, it was your name for life.
In high school we called the oldest boy in our class, who failed a few times, Stefano (Demero), because his failures meant that HE KEPT COMING BACK.
Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s decision to increase the local content is great because we get to tell our South African stories and we’ll surely miss these soapies, but like sands through the hourglass… so are the days of our lives.
Yaaseen Barnes is one of the comedians who will be performing a the Jive Cape Town Funny Festival, during a month-long comedy show at the Baxter Theatre from July 11 to August 7. Tickets are available at Computicket.com