When I was still young enough to appreciate the unquestionable coolness of a pink leopard print skirt and green high heels, I had a collection of Barbies more developed than that of my current liquor cabinet. It was one of those things that I would silently gloat over whenever school was out and my friends came over to play, snatching the prettiest doll and setting the scene before my friend would even have a chance to browse through the drawerfull. After all, they were my barbies and it was my house.
It was persistently the storyline, though, that was my favourite part. My Barbie, always exotically named and naturally fashionable, would be an actress on an outdoor set who went sky diving off mile high trees in her free time, she would attend her sister as she gave birth to a dead man’s son while trying to cure her friend’s fatal disease, or become enslaved on a distant planet by a treacherous king prone to fits of madness. And, of course, she would end up falling madly in love with a handsome, one armed ken-doll named Brett.
As I got older, my stories evolved from the dramas of your average fairy tale and became the stage to a burgeoning curiosity of the world outside my pink and yellow house. And, really, I blame Brett. By the time I was eleven, I don’t think I could make my way through a play date without somehow working in a nude scene – not that obscenity was actually a concept I grasped; nudity is just fun, you know?
There are only so many ways a prepubescent girl can think of to legitimately get Barbie naked though, and when I eventually figured I was mature enough to wear my own makeup, I figured I was of an age to start writing down my stories. Not to mention that working nudity into a game with my properly raised and god-fearing friends proved to be more difficult than it was worth. I would sit, in what I imagined was the brooding author pose, slouched over my crinkled papers, and stare at the streetlights down the road for inspiration. When I finally pieced together a two page story (and it was often about a girl, say, thirteen or fourteen years old who was rescued from chores, or homework or general tedium by the boy of her dreams), I would come downstairs for chocolate milk and accidentally tell my mom who would simply insist upon reading it, forcing me to hand it over.
Unfortunately, my ability to come up with the sort of stories worthy of a Passions or Lost episode died sometime as puberty was kicking in; I instead became woeful, bitter and, at one point, as deep as an “empty cavern” (whatever that means). Never mind Brett; I was a champion of my tumultuous emotions – the ones hidden by “smiles painted on my face” and unrequited by men who had “forgotten me” allowed me to consider myself truly artsy and brooding. I even carried a bloody book around. Though, looking through it now makes it painfully obvious that anyone with eyes and a passing knowledge of the English language should have told me that rants about immature high school kids do not make for good reading.
Long gone are the days of quadruplets, talking horses and witches in orange jumpsuits. My Barbies no longer play out odd fantasies, and Brett and the girls have made their way into the hands of the next little girl and the next set of adventures; it’s my creativity, though, that seems to have wandered off with them. No longer could I sit you down and tell you the story about the farm girl who fell through quicksand and, well… you can fill in the blanks. The point here is that I’ve come to resort to such bullshit as pretending that my own life is worthy writing material and have spent years trying to pass off my drinking stories as legitimate drama. But honestly, I’ve been wanting to meet a talking horse so bad.
It was persistently the storyline, though, that was my favourite part. My Barbie, always exotically named and naturally fashionable, would be an actress on an outdoor set who went sky diving off mile high trees in her free time, she would attend her sister as she gave birth to a dead man’s son while trying to cure her friend’s fatal disease, or become enslaved on a distant planet by a treacherous king prone to fits of madness. And, of course, she would end up falling madly in love with a handsome, one armed ken-doll named Brett.
As I got older, my stories evolved from the dramas of your average fairy tale and became the stage to a burgeoning curiosity of the world outside my pink and yellow house. And, really, I blame Brett. By the time I was eleven, I don’t think I could make my way through a play date without somehow working in a nude scene – not that obscenity was actually a concept I grasped; nudity is just fun, you know?
There are only so many ways a prepubescent girl can think of to legitimately get Barbie naked though, and when I eventually figured I was mature enough to wear my own makeup, I figured I was of an age to start writing down my stories. Not to mention that working nudity into a game with my properly raised and god-fearing friends proved to be more difficult than it was worth. I would sit, in what I imagined was the brooding author pose, slouched over my crinkled papers, and stare at the streetlights down the road for inspiration. When I finally pieced together a two page story (and it was often about a girl, say, thirteen or fourteen years old who was rescued from chores, or homework or general tedium by the boy of her dreams), I would come downstairs for chocolate milk and accidentally tell my mom who would simply insist upon reading it, forcing me to hand it over.
Unfortunately, my ability to come up with the sort of stories worthy of a Passions or Lost episode died sometime as puberty was kicking in; I instead became woeful, bitter and, at one point, as deep as an “empty cavern” (whatever that means). Never mind Brett; I was a champion of my tumultuous emotions – the ones hidden by “smiles painted on my face” and unrequited by men who had “forgotten me” allowed me to consider myself truly artsy and brooding. I even carried a bloody book around. Though, looking through it now makes it painfully obvious that anyone with eyes and a passing knowledge of the English language should have told me that rants about immature high school kids do not make for good reading.
Long gone are the days of quadruplets, talking horses and witches in orange jumpsuits. My Barbies no longer play out odd fantasies, and Brett and the girls have made their way into the hands of the next little girl and the next set of adventures; it’s my creativity, though, that seems to have wandered off with them. No longer could I sit you down and tell you the story about the farm girl who fell through quicksand and, well… you can fill in the blanks. The point here is that I’ve come to resort to such bullshit as pretending that my own life is worthy writing material and have spent years trying to pass off my drinking stories as legitimate drama. But honestly, I’ve been wanting to meet a talking horse so bad.
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