- You’re at the doctor’s office as he is telling you that due to eye problems, you will have to wear a patch. You start thinking about your favorite Patched man, and suddenly the doctor is trying to comfort you by telling you not to worry. “Like that guy from Days of our Lives, Patches can be cool,” says the doc…and he has no idea why you’re smiling so wide after hearing this. (YES, this actually happened to a Stephen and Mary Beth fan!)
- You start singing out loud, without thinking…and realize it’s a song from an mvid a fellow fan made about “Tucker”/Y&R.
- Your child and/or pet is named after Steve or Kayla or other characters played by Stephen or Mary Beth.
- You get a warm fuzzy feeling every time you hear “The Lady in Red”…even in the diet commercials!
- You’re at a wedding reception and “The Lady in Red” plays–your husband asks with a knowing grin on his face, “Do you remember that song?”
- You’re convinced every patched man in the movies is trying to measure up to the best (and not succeeding).
- The name Lizard King no longer makes you think of Jim Morrison.
- Your friends and family members know there is no fate worse than messing with your tapes/DVDs.
- Someone calling you ‘Sweetness’ made you smile for days.
- You call yourself a tree and adopt a tree name, and suddenly you take more time to notice different kinds of trees everywhere you go.
- You just know anyone who loves yellow roses must have great taste and could possibly be a fellow Steve and Kayla fan.
- You rearrange the furniture in your apartment to make your Stephen and Mary Beth tapes/DVDs more easily accessible.
- You can say Stefan Darius Mikkosovich Cassadine and even without stopping for a breath.
- Your VCR/DVD recorder had to go in for repairs and you had friends and/or family members audio tape it for you to play on the phone, and video tape it to watch later. (This was in the 80’s before you had online friends to turn to.)
- You record audio from some of your favorite Stephen and/or Mary Beth scenes to play in the car.
- You have missed work/school more than once to make sure you didn’t miss an important scene/show Stephen and/or Mary Beth were on – even if three DVD recorders or VCRs were taping it for you.
- You cancel weekend plans because someone sent you a bunch of tapes/DVDs of Stephen and Mary Beth that you haven’t seen.
- You have bought/learned to play/been given a harmonica because of your love for Steve’s harmonica playing on Days.
- Every time you hear the word “dude”, it instantly transports you to one of your many favorite Steve scenes.
- You watch a movie and think, ALL THE TIME; gee Stephen or Mary Beth could have played that role better than the person who actually played it.
- Your favorite Disney movie? Sleeping Beauty. Why? Because there’s a Prince Stefan in it.
- You read a book and imagine Stephen and/or Mary Beth playing the characters- especially romance novels. For one example, in Cherry Adair’s book, In Too Deep, the main character is a man coming to terms with having lost an eye (he wears a patch). And of course, the plot similarity makes you almost certain that the author must have been a Steve and Kayla fan too 🙂
- You read interviews/articles (or tape them from TV) about current or former costars of Stephen and Mary Beth, just to see if they might mention one or both of your favorites.
- You know you’re a fan when you buy two fish for your aquarium solely because one has a spot over his left eye (and two, because Steve and Kayla HAVE to be together). (See picture below)
- You prepare items for a garage sale, and decide to keep a set of dishes only because they’re named “Sierra Ware” – same name as a Mary Beth character.
- You visit eBay religiously, just to see if there are any new Stephen and/or Mary Beth items you can bid on.
- You hear the word “shenanigans” and instantly think of eggs in beer!
- You pass a restaurant named Shenanigans and your first thought is, “Wonder if they have a basement apartment available?”
- You buy nice Christmassy glasses with trees on them and your husband says, “I suppose you have to send one of these to all your friends online now?”
- You jump to buy an animated Santa Claus “doll” that wears a leather jacket and plays the harmonica (on sale at Wal-Mart), because he reminds you of “Patchy Clause” on Days.
- A fellow fan gave you a tree-air freshener with Stephen’s picture on it, and you hung it proudly in your car.
- You buy a cake from the day old table at the bakery just because it has yellow roses on it.
- You develop something akin to an addiction to yellow roses, even subconsciously buying yellow rose themed birthday cards for friends.
- You think the song “She’s No Lady, She’s My Wife” is one of the most romantic songs you have ever heard, and only because it reminds you of a favorite Steve and Kayla scene.
- Every lobster is named Larry and Lucy- you can be in Maine in a restaurant and you see all the lobsters as Larry and Lucy.
- You teach a girl named Stephanie and you always think of Steve and Kayla’s Stephanie when you have to call on her. The same goes for anyone named Brady or Johnson.
- Friends and family who saw Stephen on GH would always ask “Why isn’t he wearing a patch, and why isn’t he with Kayla/Mary Beth?”
- You think of the Civil War and immediately think of Emily and Gideon first- not Honest Abe- and this from a history teacher!
- You visit Charleston for the first time, and all you can think is, “Emily and Gideon (or Stephen and Mary Beth) were here”, and try to find the exact sites.
- You can’t see a harmonica without calling it a harp or hearing Patch play
- You make plans that if there is a fire- you can get your tapes of Steve and Kayla’s storyline out FIRST!!
- You teach third grade and every word problem you write on the board features someone named Steve or Kayla or Katherine or Stephen or Sierra.
- Your daughter, who was born before you became a die hard fan, mysteriously gets a middle name change from Nicole to Nichole just out of habit.
- You are on the west coast, and call friends or fellow fans on the east coast to find out what happened on a particular show Stephen or Mary Beth appeared on (to get you through the 3 hour wait).
- You’ve begged your online friends on the east coast (who get the soap magazines earlier than your part of the country) to type out any articles/interviews and/or scan pictures of Stephen and Mary Beth, because you just couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting a few more days.
- You specify in your will who will inherit your tapes/DVDs and other Stephen and Mary Beth memorabilia.
- You’ve jumped up and down or shrieked with glee at a news stand or grocery store at the sight of pictures/articles with Stephen and Mary Beth in a magazine.
- At an event, you see Nicholas Cage onstage, and even though he is one of your favorite movie actors, your first thought is, ‘ok, when are Stephen and Mary Beth coming onstage?’ And your second thought is, ‘gee it would be nice if they hit if off backstage and he got them in one of his movies.’
- The deaf storyline on Days inspired you to learn sign language.
- Back in the day your VCR was off limits to family during the daytime; your kids or grandkids couldn’t watch videos during the day when you taped Days or GH to see Stephen and Mary Beth.
- You go to Rite-Aid for shampoo and rinse, and end up buying a teddy bear because its name is “Teddy Sweetness”.
- Because your VCR was broken, you agreed to baby-sit for a friend just so you can use her VCR to watch Steve and Kayla tapes.
- You sell personal items on eBay so that you can afford to go on a trip to a fan event to meet Stephen and Mary Beth… or you sell items just so you can buy a Stephen or Mary Beth related item you have been wanting….
- You need to have (minor) surgery and you first check to make sure Stephen is not scheduled to make a public appearance in your area before you schedule the date for the surgery.
- You keep writing your Steve and Kayla/Stefan and Katherine fan fiction even though you are being teased endlessly by loved ones and/or friends… just to get your Steve and Kayla/Stefan and Katherine fix.
- You stare off into the distance and space out anytime you hear “The Rose”…and realize you’ve forgotten one of the signs that Steve used, or you hear the word Serenity and giggle uncontrollably, or you shoot pool- and just think of Steve in those jeans.
- You buy a copy of a hard-to-find movie Stephen or Mary Beth appeared in, even though the movie is on a European format tape, and you may not be able to transfer it to the format you have at home.
- You find yourself buying three little angels just because they were named, Kayla, Steve, and Stephanie, and you took the fact that they were sitting side by side on the shelf as some sort of sign.
- You buy postcards because they have the names Stephen, and Kayla, and tell about the meaning and origin of the names.
- You watch/record an episode of GH, ATWT or Days because you hear that Stefan, Katherine, Steve, Kayla, or Sierra will be mentioned or shown in a clip during a special episode….even though you haven’t watched one or any of those soaps in months/years.
- Kayla’s Cookie Castle opens around the corner from your house, and they instantly have a loyal customer.
- When they play “Shall We Gather at the River” in Church, you think of Emily and Gideon in South Carolina.
- While fixing a leaky faucet in the kitchen, the water pressure goes out of control , blows its foundation and starts flooding your house (there is no key to turn off the water), and before anything else, you run to save your 20 favorite Stephen and Mary Beth tapes that are in harm’s way . Yes, this actually happened to a Stephen and Mary Beth Fan!
- (Before the return in 2006) You’re out having dinner, and your mom asks you if you think Steve and Kayla would ever be back on Days. On cue, your waiter shows up, wearing a patch. You take it as a sign 🙂
- You hear on the news that a baseball player broke his orbital socket, you immediately remember that Steve was told he couldn’t wear another glass eye because of damage to his orbital socket
- The name “Mara Beth Stevens” appears on sample return address stamps you see in a catalog and you are certain there has to be a Stephen and Mary Beth fan somewhere in the company who makes them.
- You see a commercial for a new TV show, called “How I met Your Mother”, where one of the characters is wearing a patch. You immediately look online to find out why the person was wearing a patch.
- The little girl you baby-sit gets off the bus with a shirt that says “Sweetness” on the front and you enthusiastically tell her you LOVE HER SHIRT! She’s in Kindergarten and gives you a funny look.
- A family member saw you crying during Steve’s “death” and was immediately *very* concerned; they wanted to have you committed when they realized you were crying over a fictional character.
- You’ve been a student in the midst of studying for finals, simultaneously ill with a flu and high fever, plus there was a storm outside the likes of which you hadn’t seen for years, with road closures and floods, even tornado warnings, and yet you STILL traveled to the grocery store to get a copy of a magazine Stephen and/or Mary Beth were on the cover of. And yes, it made you feel better!
- You drive across town through a blinding snowstorm (rainstorm, hail, etc) to a particular store because they get their magazines ONE day earlier than the one closer to home (there’s a Stephen and Mary Beth article you have to see)!
- You got a speeding ticket rushing back to work after watching Steve and Kayla’s wedding on your lunch hour (because you couldn’t wait until the end of the day)..Yes, this actually happened to a Stephen and Mary Beth fan!
- Your pets are Stephen and Mary Beth fans (See pictures of Lucy the Kitty below).
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