Me, A Doll and Things That Explode ( a Christmas story )
December 1, 2010
When I was little, I would walk up to my Mom and say:
” Guess what I want for Christmas.”
My Mom would roll her eyes back up into her head and she would say ” I’d rather not.”
” Go on, guess! “
” No.” she would say firmly.
” Why won’t you guess?”
” It’s no fun because all you ever ask for are things without heads or eyes.”
” Not this year.” I said once.
“Oh boy. Gee. That’s a surprise. What do you want this year?”
” A doll.”
” I have a sneaky feeling you aren’t going to ask for a Barbie Doll. “
” Nope. I want a Crissy Doll.”
My Mom looked stunned. ” You want the doll with the hair that grows?”
- Crissy Doll circa 1969
” Yeah. I want her.”
” Why.” My Mom demanded.
” Because her hair grows. “
” Uh- huh.” My Mom said waiting for the proverbial shoe to fall from the sky where it was bound to defy the laws of physics and land right between her eyes.
” Yeah, I want a Crissy Doll. See, you grab her by the top hair on the top of her head, and you yank-” I demonstrated with a vicious twist and snap of my wrist ” like this and her hair grows.”
” No. ” My Mom said. ” No way. Ask Santa for that Gilbert Chemistry Lab you spent all summer nagging me for.”
” You said Santa wouldn’t bring me anything that I could make explode.”
” Ask for the Lab. I mean it.”
I watched my Mom walk away. ” Mom, I really, really want that doll.” I cried after her. I think that as she rounded the corner and looked back at me I fell to my knees with my hands clasped in front of me and there were probably tears rolling down my cheeks.
I waited for my Mom to go out to the kitchen and then I jumped up and danced all the way down the hall to my bedroom to admire the empty space on my desk where almost a week before I decided my new Science Lab would go.
Inspired By The SFC Prompt:
Chocolate Box Notebook: Exploring the Brave New World of Childhood
Innocence
Heather Blakey
Pelican1
Anita Marie
traveller2006
Suzanne
cheshire7
cronelogical
Sally
Jill
katirra
Edith
senua
cydlee61
cjvibes
bonniemc3
scribblenpaint
gwenguin1
Cle
keeperofdreams
woodnymph
So, did anything explode after you got the chemistry set?
and HOW!
Another story on the back burner, no doubt.
..and on little glass slides
Ha! So Christmas was fun once, eh? It was a time to work our little wiles and guiles wasn’t it? Not such sugar n’ spice. I’m working the angle a bit again in my middle age. Outright asking for inexpensive ‘tradesies’ since I don’t have family and my parnter is the Grinch himself. But I DO love vision of you workin’ it for the Chem set. LOL You are true to your core self and that is why I love you. Cheers mate!
I admire my family- how they managed to keep Christmas ‘normal’ despite me
was quite the task.
That set was worth the effort- I can’t believe they sold those things to kids- here’s the plus side. I turned out to be quite the science student!
now I wonder why I can well believe that ….
I was a tomboy and as such never wanted dolls. Now that chem set, that would have been right up my alley.
Vi
You and Me Vi!
My dad smade the mistake of telling me that back in the late 1950′s Gilbert sold radioactive material in their kits- so of course I spent my entire childhood BEGGING for that one.
I just loved this post A.M. It is so very you. I remember making a ‘Who Killed Barbie?’ cake and having a blood splattered, decapitated doll on it for children with humor like yours.
I am SO going to beg you to make me a birthday cake Heather- you now that right