another barbie story

After yesterday's angry, frothing-at-the-mouth post about the evils of Mattel, how ironic it was when the Kiddo came to me this afternoon and said, "Can I just play Barbies with Daddy?"

Yes, I have a box of my old Barbies tucked away under my son's bed. I brought them with me when I left home, thank you. It had only been like 2 years since I stopped playing with them, after all.

And yes, my son does drag them out and play with them from time to time. He's secure in his manhood.

The weird part of this whole situation was that from the other room, I could tell by the conversation that his father was indeed taking part in the Barbie playing.

Nothing like male bonding.

After a few minutes, my husband yelled for help. I believe his exact words were, "YOU DIDN'T TELL ME YOU WERE GONNA KILL IT!" a la Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin, speaking to himself or to no one in particular I guess. I hollered from the kitchen to ask what was going on and he informed me that one of the Barbies heads had come off.

"Oh, no! Which one?" I responded.

Silence.

More silence.

"...Barbie?"

Sigh... bless him.

I walked back to the Kiddo's room to survey the damage only to find that my husband had completely broken the head off what had been of one of my favorite dolls.

"Awww! You broke Tracy's head off!" I exclaimed.

And then he started laughing.

And he continued to laugh every time I referred to her by her name.

Yes, I named all of my Barbies.

Off the top of my head, other than Tracy I can remember Julia, Cindy, Reese, Becky, Todd, Kenneth (because Ken just wasn't good enough), Michael, and Nixon.

That's right. I named one of my Ken dolls Nixon.

My own little Barbie soap opera population.

And now Tracy... the heroine of every plot, the one every Ken doll had a crush on, and every Barbie and Skipper doll admired...

has been reduced to this...

Ye olde hubby's only explanation was that he was trying to put pants on her because he thought she looked distasteful.

These are the kinds of things that can happen to a girl when she goes around in nothing but a pair of pink hot pants.

After considerable searching, I located her head under my bed alongside of misplaced baseball.

All of this is just further proof that it never pays to dress like a floozy.

You can end up decapitated and disgraced, lying in pieces on someone's bedroom floor while creepy little critters like this one...

run around the house saying, "I BROKE TRACY'S NECK! I BROKE TRACY'S NECK!"

Even though he didn't.

Who knows where his creative streak could come from...

The entertaining part of this story is that, by the end of the night, our entire household was referring to a doll by her first name. And talking about her rather like she was an actual person.

Keep smiling, Tracy...

you may be past your prime, but you went down in a blaze of glory. Under my bed with a baseball.

And finally got the recognition you deserved all along.

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Away to Pemberley