I'm taking a little blog break for the next couple of weeks but not to worry, you are in very good hands. I've lined up some of my favorite bloggers to mind the store. They'll be showing off their mad writing skillz while I'm away. Their assignment (because I'm a sentimental person and I've been feeling nostalgic lately): Write about the 80's. Anything goes.
Like yesterday's guest poster, Jessica Ashley, Mike Adamick and I also used to work together. Mike is one of the most talent writers I know, but don't take my word for it:
On Want, Or Tales from the Cabbage Patch
It's almost like a slap in the face, 20 years later, to live in a house filled with Cabbage Patch Dolls. As a child, I wanted nothing more than a real, live Cabbage Patch Doll -- a cellophane-enshrouded cherub to call my own. I didn't particularly care that my parents would have to wait in line 30 days to purchase one -- really, that was a win-win scenario, considering I'd get a doll and they'd be gone for a month, leaving three boys to fend for themselves.
Honeycombs for dinner? Don't mind if I do!
Sure,
part of me worried that once the toy store opened, they'd be involved
in a deadly stampede you were always hearing about -- "Area Woman
Crushed to Death as Patrons Grabbed Dolls from her Dying Clutches" --
but it seemed like a small price to pay. Yes, I'd lose one parent but
also gain one Cabbage Patch Doll, so naturally it was a wash. At times
when I really thought about it deep down, when I contemplated the Fates
and considered what it would be like to go through life with only one
parent, I would put my fist to my chin, furrow my brow and wonder which
one could better withstand a bum's rush like that.
One afternoon I caught my mom in the kitchen doing the dishes, and
I found myself studying her hands. Were they strong enough, I wondered?
"Mom," I said, "Let's say you died -- would you still have prehensile gripping strength in your hands?"
"What?"
"Your hands," I continued, "How long would you be able to hold something after being crushed to death?"
"You mean a person?"
"No, I mean you specifically. How committed are you to your children?"
She threw down her rag and turned off the water, putting a hand on a hip.
"What on earth are you going on about? What are your brothers up to?"
I decided to ask my dad instead.
In
the end, however, both of them turned out to be unloving grinches who
seemed displeased either at the notion of standing in line for a month
or getting crushed to death. It was hard to tell which. So instead of a
Cabbage Patch Doll, I was packed off to school with a Care Bear. A
green Care Bear with a clover embellished on its tummy.
"His name is Lucky," my mom said, although I had no idea why, because real
luck would have meant coming out of the toy factory as a Cabbage Patch
Doll, not a discolored woodland creature with an abdominal impairment.
"Oh please," my mom said, "Lucky's just as good as those cabbage people. You'll see."
Care
Bears must have been easier to come by, because I remember gathering
quite a few of them. There was Rainbow Bear, Cloud Bear, Heart Bear. I
don't remember if they had real names, these cupcake-colored munchkins,
and truth be told, I never got to know them well. I begrudged them.
They weren't Cabbage Patch Dolls and were clearly inferior.
Lucky, however, began to grow on me.
While all the neighborhood children laughed and rambled about with the cherubic symbols that their
parents loved them, I often found myself outside the Cabbage Patch
Circle, clutching Lucky. I took him to school, helped him down slides,
even pushed him on the swing. From time to time, a friend with a
Cabbage Patch Doll would use the next swing over and I could have sworn
they both looked down at my bear. Someone in the 80s must have thought
it was cute to give stuffed toys tramp stamps, because while Cabbage
Patch Dolls had tattoos with the name of their creator -- Xavier
something -- on their asses, Care Bears possessed little red hearts on
their own special, private places. In the realm of childhood, an Xavier
tattoo apparently held more stuffed butt clout, and I always had a
feeling that if there were a caste system for dolls, Lucky would be on
the lowest rung.
It made me defensive. It wasn't his fault he looked like Elphaba Thropp. He was just born that way.
On
the swings, I pushed Lucky and ignored my friend's Cabbage Patch Doll a
few feet away, but it was hard not to gape. Look at those curls, I
found myself thinking. Look at those dimples. Movie stars would just kill for a button nose like that. There was really no disguising my jealousy, no matter what lengths I went to.
"You know," I told me friend, "Bears can't get herpes."
"What?"
"Cabbage
Patch Dolls are humans and it's a known fact that humans can get
herpes. Bears can't. So if you want to play with a little STD
incubator, well ... I guess that's cute?"
By the end of the year, it was just me and Lucky.
We
were on the outside, alone together. I kept Lucky for years, sleeping
with him, dressing him, hugging him tightly. I sometimes wonder where
he is now. Whether my mom kept him, or whether he wound up in some
heaven for discarded stuffed animals, and whether he was still on the
lower rung, perhaps serving lunch to some throw-away Cabbage Patch Doll
whose once-adorable butt tattoo you just knew was stretching horribly
with age. I suppose I still get defensive.
Which is why I was so perturbed when my mom came over the other day and gave my daughter a Cabbage Patch Doll.
Whenever
my mom comes to visit, she takes Emmeline on a long walk around the
neighborhood, stopping at the corner donut shop before circling back to
hit a tiny pocket playground and then the Salvation Army, where they
stock up on cheap toys and books. Together they have purchased
perfectly good used rocking horses, endless Curious George books, hats,
shirts, stuffed, pixie dolls and, most recently, two Cabbage Patch
Dolls.
I was cleaning the kitchen when they
came back from one of these trips, clutching a Cabbage Patch Doll with
an adorable eyelet sun dress and a smile so sickeningly sweet it made
me dizzy.
"What's she doing here?" I asked.
"Who?"
I pointed at the doll.
"Isn't she great?" my mom cheered, "Just like new too!"
For
the past several days, the two Cabbage Patch Dolls -- Lucy and I Forget
the Other -- have joined Emme and me at various and assorted tea
parties, and while they have generally been pleasant company, I'm
beginning to think they secretly know they're better than all the
others. After all, what other toys did we have that people literally
lost their lives trying to buy? No one would risk getting maimed for a
Curious George doll, and those little vegetable children knew it. Even
decades after their glory days ended, you could just tell they knew
they were special.
The other night, after
Emmeline went to bed, I noticed Lucy was still in the playroom, lording
over the other toys. I picked her up and gave her a thorough once over.
It was the first time in my life I had ever really held a Cabbage Patch
Doll. I'm a 31-year-old man, and there I was, undressing a doll to see
if it had an Xavier tattoo on its ass. After a few minutes, I realized
something: Lucy wasn't so special after all -- just a bunch of cotton
balls stuffed into a leftover pair of Leggs. Sure, her face was
remarkably adorable, even after years of abandonment, but it got me
thinking. Would I stand in line for a month for this? Would I risk
being maimed or amputated or killed ... for this?
They
say that as a parent, you always want something a little better for
your own children -- a small step up the happy ladder. A better house,
a better childhood, a better sleep-away camp, preferably one without
head lice, roaches and grabby counselors. But I began to wonder just
how far I would go in the future over fad toys. Before these new
Cabbage Patch Dolls arrived in our household, I probably would have
stood in line with all the other parents, waiting for the doors to open
before we crushed the sick and the elderly in the vain attempt to bring
home the next Power Ranger, the next karate turtle or the satanic spawn
of Elmo and whichever Sesame Street character gets desperate enough to
have a child with him.
But now ... now I'm not so sure.
What has parenthood done to me?
At
2, Emmeline hasn't expressed a strong desire for any particular toy we
can't make her forget about with ice cream or cookies. And I don't
recall any recent toy crazes on par with Cabbage Patch Dolls or that
Tickle Me Elmo from a few years back. But one will come, I'm sure of
it. They always do.
When Emme's older and that
desire strikes -- when that aching want compels her to plead or beg or
shove me out into the Christmas-time cold and certain doom at the toy
store -- I have a feeling I'll want to pull her into my arms and tell
her to just wait, to hang on. In 20 years, she'll feel silly. One new
fad will be replaced by the next and pretty soon she'll have a family
of her own and find herself alone in a playroom late at night,
examining some cast-away, cuddly ingot of forgotten childhood necessity
and think, "This is nothing more than cotton balls, plastic, panty hose
and butt ink. Maybe my parents actually knew what they were doing?"
And
then she'll shuffle off to bed, sure of the nightmares to come --
because nothing is scarier than having to admit your parents might have
been on to something.
Mike
Adamick is a degenerate crack whore. When he's not selling his body for
cigarettes and cheap booze, you can find him writing at the San
Francisco Chronicle's parenting blog, The Poop, or at Babble.com. His
mom reads his own blog, Cry It Out: Adventures of a stay-at-home dad,
so if you visit there, please don't ever tell her she was right.
Other posts in this series:
Once upon the late eighties, I was a club girl
Other posts in this series:
Once upon the late eighties, I was a club girl
