My children
were always frightened of her, its large size, the human-like appearance, the
strange sounds coming from the inside, and the moving eyes that closed when the
doll was tilted. She is dressed in an elegant party frock, socks, black shoes,
and beautiful natural curly tresses somehow tediously transplanted into a
rubber head. Dad must have worked many days overtime to afford such an
expensive gift that my children did not appreciate.
I was not
surprised that my daughters refused to play with her. She sat forgotten and
dusty in some corner on the floor, an expensive dust catcher. Even the cat gave
her a wide berth as if she was possessed.
I think
Daddy was trying to make up for lost time. When I was a little girl, he could
only afford to buy me a small stuffed cloth doll with a cardboard-covered-with-porcelain
head which I accidentally cracked on the first drop on the floor. A gaping hole
opened on her head but I proudly held her in a photo as the most precious toy I
had. She came with a wooden bed and a tiny wool comforter.
My one and only doll
I had begged
Daddy for one of these fancy dolls with real hair, plastic heads, and posable
arms and legs but he could not afford any. His 800-lei per month salary had to provide
food, clothes, rent, water, electricity, heat, and public transportation for
our family of three. A toy was an unnecessary luxury.
I was 16
years old when I got my first brown teddy bear from a generous friend who
bought it for my birthday. Since I left Romania when I was almost twenty years
old, I don’t remember what happened to my three toys I left behind and to all
my paperbacks. I could only bring one suitcase of clothes and mom chose to pack
it with hand-made sheets that could not possibly fit the larger American beds.
Once I saw
the variety of toys children had in this country, I was elated that my kids
would have plenty of educational and fun toys. Aside from plastic farms, the
first electronic hear and say board, Pictionary, board games, miniature trains
on tracks, Barbie dolls, trolls, unicorns, blue Smurfs, Rainbow Brite dolls,
and the first Nintendo game, one of my daughters fancied a Cabbage Patch Kids doll,
a very expensive toy for a student with small children, living on a very
limited income. The choice was whether we paid rent and bought food, or we
purchased the beloved Cabbage Patch Kids doll.
I could not
understand the frantic American parents during the 1983 Christmas season searching
for the coveted Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. Long waiting lists and first-come,
first-serve sales policy gave rise to vicious fights between prospective buyers.
By the end of the year, three million dolls had been “adopted.” This frenzy I
could never understand, repeated almost every Christmas season over some new
and coveted toy that a spoiled American child had to have.
The 16-inch Cabbage Patch Kids doll, with a plastic bald
head or yarn hair, and fabric body, was desired by American children because
she was huggable, had a birth date, and could be “adopted.” Different clothes,
hair color, skin color, hair style, and clothes made her that much more cherished.
The official price was $30 but black market prices ranged from $100 to high
triple digits.
One day, as I was perusing the children’s
department to buy a specific shirt for my grandson, I spotted a solitaire Cabbage
Patch Kids doll on a shelf on a distant wall. I was not aware that they still
made them today and, I was surprised to find it in this high-end department
store. The tag said that this doll was created on August 9, 2015.
I picked it up, and, to my astonishment,
the doll was originally priced at $50, but a sale price of $37.50 was crossed
over. I took the doll to the cash register and asked to scan the real price.
Another big surprise, the doll was one penny. One penny? Yes, the doll had been
retired from stock but someone forgot to remove it from the sales floor. I knew
I had to buy it for my daughter who is now a mom herself. Her birthday was fast
approaching and nostalgia set in. I handed the cashier a dime and told her to
keep the change.
I mailed the doll with trepidation,
hoping that my daughter still remembered how disappointed I was when I could
not afford to buy her the doll. Now she was going to receive one for one penny,
an interesting lesson in history, wants, needs, and economics. I wrote her a
note – I was hoping someday she may have a daughter or granddaughter who could
play with it. Until then, it will remain a collector’s item in the original
box.
Time has an interesting way of weaving
events. When Eileen suggested that I buy such a doll as a gift and even the
title of the story, I was incredulous that it was a good idea. But this doll somehow
closed the circle for me, from the communist barren patch with my cloth doll with
a broken face to the capitalist one-penny Cabbage Patch Kids cloth doll with a
plastic face.
Childhood is a most curious thing, isn't it? It is almost like a phase in the life of a butterfly. Looking back on it, we know it was us, but we were so so different. Loved your story.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Chriss.
DeleteIt is another life, in some many ways for me. Uprooting from a dictatorship to a relatively free country, a different economic system, so far away from family, so different culturally, settling in, and then uprooting again within the same country but moving in this country more and more towards socialism. It's almost like a vicious circle, we are returning to a system very similar to what I escaped.
Childhood is a most curious thing, isn't it? It is almost like a phase in the life of a butterfly. Looking back on it, we know it was us, but we were so so different. Loved your story.
ReplyDeleteThis should be a history lesson for those millions of people voting for Bernie Sanders a True Socialist. Maybe if Bernie's followers could read this, they might realize the difference in Capitalism vs Socialism/Communism. Maybe and I mean maybe, they would wake up to reality and vote Republican.
ReplyDeleteWe could only wish, Marlene. But the Bernie supporters are deaf and dumb to history and reality.
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