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Close to Nowhere
By Linda Jones Barbie, Part I Barbie was “born” in 1959 and named after the inventor’s daughter Barbie (naturally). The
designer/inventor for Mattel, whom I believe was named Ruth, came up
with the idea for Barbie as an alternative to “the weekly shopping for
paper dolls.” I loved paper dolls as a child! In
fact, I still love paper dolls! But Barbie was (is) something special!
I was sixish or so when I first “met” Barbie and have no clue as to how
old I was when I finally got my first Barbie doll. At
some point in the mid-sixties, I became the envy of every girl in my
neighborhood. For my birthday, my mom got me the ultimate Barbie. At
the time, I don’t remember what she was called, just that she was
spectacular! After a little recent research on the Internet, I’ve
discovered she was called “Fashion Queen Barbie,” and was around from
1962-1965. I loved that Barbie! I loved all my Barbies, but this one -- well, as I said, I was the envy of all my friends! She
had wigs! Three of them! With plastic molded hair on her actual head,
so the wigs could easily be slid on and off by little fingers, she was
so beautiful! She had blonde, brunette and red wigs, with the lucious
figure Barbie used to have and that incredible blue eyeshadow. I
realize that I have turned into my father and venture more and more
often into the past, but there is a wonderful reason for this trip down
memory lane. After my now infamous brown recluse
spider bite, I kept all my friends updated on my progress on FaceBook
and enjoyed all the sympathy. One of my FaceBook
friends, Delores Elliott, is another doll addict. I first met her doing
a story on her “doll hospital” and since both of us were avid doll
lovers, we instantly became friends. I had a
Chatty Cathy as a kid and Delores and I talked about her a lot. Delores
has just about every doll you can think of and her doll hospital is
another stroll down memory lane. A wonderful stroll! I’d
mentioned my three-wigged Barbie to Delores several times in some of
our “doll discussions” and apparently, she has a great memory. Just
a week or so after my extremely painful spider bite, I’d “FaceBooked”
about how miserable I was. Just a day or so after that, Delores dropped
into the newspaper office to check up on me. Being feeble due to the bite, I didn’t even notice she had a gift bag until she handed it to me. Guess what was inside? My three-wigged Barbie! To be continued...
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