You’ll have to forgive me today if the column’s a little off. I’m in a huge funk, brought on by the news that was released late last week: All My Children has been cancelled.

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut when I learned the news via a friend’s Facebook post. Teenagers today don’t know what they’ve missed. I’d be surprised if one of the Brentwood teens I know has ever watched a soap opera. Most of them have grown up with cable TV, texting telephones and more real-life drama playing out every day in their lives to need  to become enraptured with the mundane life experienced everyday by the residents of Pine Valley.

But as any All My Children fan knows, life in Pine Valley was never mundane. As writer Dominic Rushe wrote from New York for the U.K.’s Guardian:

“All My Children has survived Vietnam, abortion, teen prostitutes, murder and cocaine addiction. Erica Kane, the soap's biggest star, has seen off 10 husbands and once took on a grizzly bear while dressed as a nun. Now the 41-year-old show has met its match – in reality TV.

I don’t remember exactly when I started watching it, but it was close to its beginning. Tara and Phillip were in love. It was, of course, the first of many romances Erica ended, all for her own advancement.

I watched through the Cliff and Nina years and the Greg and Jenny ones. I remember when Kelly Rippa wasn’t with Regis, but was Hayley. Who can forget Tad and Dixie?

Over the last 25 years or so, I’ve kept up with AMC via weekly newspaper columns and the occasion lunch at home. Two maternity leaves and a few sabbaticals over the past 25-plus years allowed me to reconnect and re-engage on occasion.

While I admit I’m a little lost when I do get to catch it now, it feels like déjà vu to know that Jesse and Angie are back in town and just had a baby. But since Angie’s now blind, it won’t be an easy road.

Especially now that the road to the future is blocked.

One Life to Live is getting the ax too but while I loved it when it spun off of AMC years ago, I never stayed with it like I did Erica & Co. However, it does give me a legitimate Brentwood connection to bring this full circle.

At Saturday’s Town Center Saturday festival, I met a Brentwood mom who, like so many folks who live here, settled in Brentwood with her husband when they started their family.

While today you’ll find Erika Page White in the pickup line at Scales Elementary, she used to star in One Life to Live as Roseanne Delgado.

I didn’t make the connection until it was too late to share sob stories, but we will, I’m sure of it. In fact, I’m thinking a gathering of Brentwood All My Children (and OLTL) fans may be in order on the last day they air. Someplace with margaritas -- and a few boxes of tissues.

Want in? Email me at susan@brentwoodhomepage.com.

Now for a little high-flying scoop 
Everyone knows – or should know -- that WSM-650 AM has the best live traffic reports every weekday morning and afternoon during rush hour. That’s because they have live, from the sky, reports. I even got to go up with “Commander Chuck” Johnson last Black Friday to check out the day-after-Thanksgiving sales traffic. Who knew every Best Buy parking lot in town could be full at 6 a.m.?

But back to the news at hand: Commander Chuck tells me longtime traffic reporter Richard Thomas is coming out of retirement to once again provide morning drive traffic reports for the “Air Castle in the Sky” that beams its broadcast from our city’s newest (and only?) national landmark, the WSM Tower.

"We are so excited Richard has come out of retirement and joined our team,” said Johnson, CEO of Skywatch Traffic Nashville. “This guy should be in the Radio Hall of Fame. Thirty-five years as an airborne traffic reporter in the same market with the same radio station is very rare."