Happy Birthday to my dear friend Barbie
Posted: Friday, March 13, 2009
by Nila Smith
Fact and Fiction
This week Barbie turned 50! She is only slightly younger than I am, but she has certainly aged better!
I remember fondly my first Barbie, then Midge, and finally Skipper.
If you've read any of my other pieces you know that I was never a little girly girl. I owned more toy cars, trucks and tractors than I did dolls. But Barbie and her friends were my special friends.
They were special because they allowed me to be someone else for a while.
As an only child until the age of ten, living in a very rural community, I had no playmates in the summer months when school was out, except when my city cousins came for their annual week stay.
My best friends, Barbie, Midge and Skipper where the ones who kept me company during those solitary months. With them at my side, we played with the toy cars, trucks and tractors, we dug the dirt out from between the tree roots in my grandma's yard, and built mud pies, and forts.
I was raised in the age where that respect for elders was key to a child's survival, especially when the elder fell into the additional category of mom, dad, gramma, gramps, or the minister.
I'm not sure how the minister ranked so well, but he did. When we went to
When mom would do something that made me mad like tell me to clean my room, or dry the dishes, I couldn't do or say anything about it. Talking back to mom meant a spanking from dad when he got home from work no doubt, so Midge and Skipper would fight. Skipper would be sassy and smart, and sometimes downright mean. Barbie got to be gramma, partially because she had short white blonde hair, and I could easily pretend she was filling that roll. Also, as my best friend in other story lines, I didn't have the heart to make her the mean one who was making Skipper aka Nila crazy.
Instead it was Gramma Barbie who would come to poor Skippers rescue, always there with a hug, a comforting word, and a big bowl of ice cream, just like my real grandma would have, had I ever had the nerve to tell her that mom had made me mad in the first place.
For a long while, I thought that perhaps I was the only one in the world who used Barbie to act out my frustrations. Then one day I found out I was wrong.
It was summer and the city cousins where there for their annual week long visit with grandma. Their mom and dad would bring them on Sunday, and leave them until the following Sunday.
While they were supposedly spending the week with grandma, in reality they were at my house most of the time. It was supposed to be a "treat" for all of us to be together, and I'll admit that for the first day or so it was.
But as the old saying goes; "company is like dead fish, after three days it really starts to stink".
So, it was day four, and things were not going well with the cousins. We were fighting about everything, and there were three of them and only one of me, so I was greatly outnumbered.
My mom was at her wits end with the whole lot of us, and she finally threw up her hands and threatened us all, that if we didn't stop the fighting, she was going to call my aunt and uncle and make them come get the cousins toot sweet.
I guess deep down, none of us wanted that to happen because we settled down, and started playing with our Barbies.
Soon, though, the Barbies were all fighting. This time the score was a little more even because I had Barbie, Midge, and Skipper, and all three of "my girls" went after their girls with a vengeance! It got loud, it got semi-violent, and it was a wonderful release!
We were conducting our battle outside, spread out on a blanket under the big shade tree in the front yard. My mom was in the back yard hanging out laundry and heard the Malay.
She came around the corner of the house yelling at the top of her lungs that she had heard all of this she was going to hear, at which time, we all turned to her with innocent eyes, asking all at once what was wrong.
"You're all fighting again, I warned you about this" she cried "You girls are on your way back to
We all starting bawling and blubbering that we were just playing and having a good time, and wasn't that what she wanted, and please don't call mommy and daddy, and on and on and on.
Poor mom, she stood there astonished, puzzled by the whole mess, but finally accepted that it was the dolls that were fighting and not us girls.
She eventually went back to the laundry and left us alone.
Which was probably a good thing, because within moments of her rounding the corner of the house, we were all yelling at Midge, and running to "gramma Barbie" for big bowls of ice cream!
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)I found that kind of confusing...I'm not sure why. I understood what it was about and I can realate on the whole fighting with you cousins(I have at least 20 cousins and 20 step-cousins)Thanks you for your comments.I'm sorry the piece didn't translate well.Hopefully I'll do better on the next article.Thanks again,Nila
Good job on an America idol. Barbie has been around well it sems like forever and yes even she has changed her perspectives with time. It sort of reinforces relativism.Thank-you for your comments.I hesitate to agree that Barbie has been around forever, because that would mean I've been around slightly longer than "forever". LOL
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