My 34 year old sister and my birthday present
A couple of days ago a box arrived from my sister who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her gifts to me have been getting increasingly weird (weird: huh?, not weird: Cool!) for the past few years. I think she out did herself this year. I opened the box only to be face to face with a Barbie doll. That's right, a Barbie doll.
Now, I have quite frequently bought toys for adult friends when the toys were 1) just plain really cool (like an RC Cobra, as in snake, with flashing red eyes from Fisher price, if you get 2 you can race them!) or 2) somehow spoke of the person's personality (a nerf dart gun for one of my managers at Bordes so she could shoot co-workers when they did something dumb at the register). I think my sister was trying to do one or both of these things, but it falls a bit flat since I HATE BARBIES.
I never understood the fascination with Barbie dolls. As a little girl I was always like "You can take their clothes off and put on new ones? What else do they do? Oh, nothing. Uh, no, thank you." I liked my dolls to actually DO something. My favorite toys included Transformers (still have an original Soundwave), G.I. Joes (only the females), Golden Girls (no, not the TV show about the old people, they were warrior women complete with WEAPONS), Sectaurs (very obscure), Jem dolls (I preferred the Misfits, thank you), and My Little Ponies (unicorns, of course).
To a certain extent I can see her amusement about it. It's a wizard (Mattel cashing in on the Harry Potter phenomenon) Barbie named Christie. Ok, kind of amusing. I did go through a pagan stage in my teenage years, but I got better. And Christie is almost like Chrissy, but I still don't answer to it. It's more of one of those things you point to in a store and laugh, not buy and send cross country. I am being bothered by how much she doesn't know me anymore, or by how much she is not adjusting her view of me. We used to be ridiculously close. Several years ago she got me a Jack Skellington mug (I still use it). A few years after that she bought me an X-tra large 'I Leave Bite Marks' t-shirt (XL?! and 'I Leave Bite Marks' is a little creepy coming from one's sister). This year it's a "Pagan" Barbie (yes, that's what she called it in her card to me).
An aside:
Jermy bought me two stuffed dragons from Manhatten Toys for my birthday. I pointed them out in the store and snuggled them before I put them back. He also knows that I've been heartbroken because I came to the realization this summer that sometime in the last few moves I lost my pewter dragon collection that I started when I was like 7 or 8. Included in that collection were atleat 2 dragons from my grandfather that I will never be able to replace. It's been like loosing a chuck of my childhood.
Dragons from Jeremy made sense. A Barbie from my sister just made me go Why?
Now, I have quite frequently bought toys for adult friends when the toys were 1) just plain really cool (like an RC Cobra, as in snake, with flashing red eyes from Fisher price, if you get 2 you can race them!) or 2) somehow spoke of the person's personality (a nerf dart gun for one of my managers at Bordes so she could shoot co-workers when they did something dumb at the register). I think my sister was trying to do one or both of these things, but it falls a bit flat since I HATE BARBIES.
I never understood the fascination with Barbie dolls. As a little girl I was always like "You can take their clothes off and put on new ones? What else do they do? Oh, nothing. Uh, no, thank you." I liked my dolls to actually DO something. My favorite toys included Transformers (still have an original Soundwave), G.I. Joes (only the females), Golden Girls (no, not the TV show about the old people, they were warrior women complete with WEAPONS), Sectaurs (very obscure), Jem dolls (I preferred the Misfits, thank you), and My Little Ponies (unicorns, of course).
To a certain extent I can see her amusement about it. It's a wizard (Mattel cashing in on the Harry Potter phenomenon) Barbie named Christie. Ok, kind of amusing. I did go through a pagan stage in my teenage years, but I got better. And Christie is almost like Chrissy, but I still don't answer to it. It's more of one of those things you point to in a store and laugh, not buy and send cross country. I am being bothered by how much she doesn't know me anymore, or by how much she is not adjusting her view of me. We used to be ridiculously close. Several years ago she got me a Jack Skellington mug (I still use it). A few years after that she bought me an X-tra large 'I Leave Bite Marks' t-shirt (XL?! and 'I Leave Bite Marks' is a little creepy coming from one's sister). This year it's a "Pagan" Barbie (yes, that's what she called it in her card to me).
An aside:
Jermy bought me two stuffed dragons from Manhatten Toys for my birthday. I pointed them out in the store and snuggled them before I put them back. He also knows that I've been heartbroken because I came to the realization this summer that sometime in the last few moves I lost my pewter dragon collection that I started when I was like 7 or 8. Included in that collection were atleat 2 dragons from my grandfather that I will never be able to replace. It's been like loosing a chuck of my childhood.
Dragons from Jeremy made sense. A Barbie from my sister just made me go Why?
posted by Chrissy at 10/31/2004 06:29:00 PM
2 Comments:
I can't say that I would ever peg you for a Barbie fan.
Josh's sister-in-law (well, mine now, too) collects Barbie dolls. She keeps them all in boxes, packed away. Usually. Every once in a while, Josh's brother comes home to find all of the Barbies out of their boxes, scattered all over the house. Apparently, they need to breathe occasionally.
So keep that in mind for Pagan Barbie.
I also was a fan of the Jem dolls. They had real-people feet! (I had Jem, all of the Holograms, and one of the Misfits. Stormer? Stormy? The one with the blue hair).
I think I'll wait until after my sister visits for Thanksgiving and donate the Barbie to Toys for Tots, unless you get info from your sister in-law that she REALLY wants this Barbie.
I had/have(somewhere) Jem, the Holograms, the 3 Misfits (Stormer, Roxy, and Pizazz), Rio (the boyfriend), Synergy, and I thnk someone else who I don't remember who they were. I also had the 'stage' that was a cassette player and the 'dressing room' that was an amplifier. When I collected something I needed them ALL which meant any money I saved as a child went to whatever I was collecting at the time. My My Little Pony collection got pretty out of hand until I grew out of them. Actully this didn't hold true for Transformers, or GI Joes, as there was no end in sight for those. After My Little Ponies I needed things that were of a finite and managable number. Also, I tended to gravitate to things that had good and evil, mostly to the evil because they were always cooler.
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