My First Barbie

My mother has this habit of randomly picking up gifts on her way home from work. Every evening, as soon as I opened the door, I would do a quick-scan to spot any hidden surprises. Then I would check her hands, her bags, even her hard hat, to see if she had a little packet of mint fudge, or a toy car, or a tintin concealed somewhere. If I was really lucky it could be that most un-attainable worshipped, 'super expensive' thing ... pyramids from cookie jar. Sometimes if she was working at a construction site near school she would turn up at lunch time with some pyramids.

Twenty years ago, on this day, at 9 in the morning she got me a doll. I called it Barbie Doll. I hated it at sight. It had a funny colour. You could move its arms and legs, but it wasnt pretty, so you wouldnt really want to. It had wispy black hair in curls. It could cry, but so could another one of my dolls and its cry didnt sound half as 'natural'. Anyway, I never liked dolls much (except for Jane who was lame, and Prajukta, or Dolly, who was My Last Doll - like in the Little Princess)

However, the Barbie Doll had something special about it, as I soon discovered: She could grow. She grew and grew, till she was taller than Mommy by a much respected inch! She stands 5'10" in bare feet. Her hair grew too: wispy no longer, it grew thicker as mine vanished. It hated cigerettes, then loved them. It loved 'NOW thats what I call music' then grew to Led Zep. It loved Nancy Drew, then grew to Kafka. It even grew grass on the roof to my Mommy's eternal shock!

Before I knew what hit me, that scrawny, whiney, sissy little wannabe, that trailed me everywhere and played with dolls and wrote on the walls grew into a 'person' and morphed into one of my best friends, eerily like enough to be able to guess I did a undo-redo 3 or 4 times on the 'one of' part.

Happy Birthday Barbie. Love you, B%"£@. Like one of your childhood cards to me ends, 'dated till this good phase lasts' ... hope it lasts forever


barbie and leo
Originally uploaded by prerona.

Originally Posted at Prerona.