When I was a little girl, Cabbage Patch Kids were the hot ticket item at Christmas time. It took me a few years to get one. I begged and begged my poor mother each year and swore that if I did not receive one that Christmas, it would surely be my last because I would just die. My grandma, rest her soul, tried to hand-make one for me, but it wasn’t quite the same. The doll she made looked similar enough to a Cabbage Patch doll but the nose was longer, kind of funny shaped, and there was something off about its eyes. They followed me. My grandma’s house was stocked full of dolls of that nature, always looking at me, sometimes blinking, heads cocked to one side. Some of her dolls were life size, some of them were missing eyes, some were either bald or had patches of missing hair. Some of the dolls were all wrong, obviously possessing the heads ripped off of other dolls so they had these giant bulbous heads but teeny tiny bodies. Every single one of them was the stuff of nightmares.
It was my brother who gave me my first Cabbage Patch Doll. I couldn’t be afraid of this doll, even though at the time my mom almost threw it away because Xavier Roberts (the supposed creator of the dolls whose name was scribbled on their butts) was a pronounced Satan worshipper. At least, that’s what someone from my church had said and my mom believed them. No, my doll wasn’t a creature of Satan. She was pure heaven. My doll had blonde hair tied in two pigtails on either side of her perfectly round head. She had a cute little dimple in one of her cheeks. She had cute corduroy overalls. She was my very first Cabbage Patch Kid. I had a couple more after that, but that doll in particular was my favorite one. Maybe it was because it was my brother and not my mom who bought it for me. My brother was living in Washington D.C. Maplewood
I kind of have a thing about dolls.
Okay, that’s an understatement. I hate dolls. I hate clowns too. But what child of the 80’s doesn’t after seeing Poltergeist, right? I’m not crazy about any toys with eyes. I’m also not crazy about toys that move and talk. Because any toy that sings, or talks, or makes any kind of noise, always, always goes off at some point when you’re not touching it, usually during the night. When I lived with my parents, my nephew would stay over a lot so we kept a lot of his toys in the back room of the house which was right behind my bedroom. He had a pair of giant green Hulk hands that when you slapped them together would scream “HULK SMASH!” I woke up one night to that very sound. When the fear that someone was trying to smash my face subsided and I became un-paralyzed, I went looking for what I thought was either going to be a toy or a very tan blonde-haired wrestler. I found the Hulk hands and I threw them down the basement steps. I thought that was the end of it, thinking I had broken them somehow. Just a few minutes later I closed my eyes and heard “HULK SMASH!” Was it me or was the sound getting louder? I expected to turn my head and see them floating above me. I ran down to the basement, picked them up, ran back upstairs, opened my back door and chucked them into the backyard as hard as I possibly could. They landed with a “HU--.”
I could tell you all of the other stupid things I’m scared of. Things like bobble heads, which aren’t as cute and unassuming as you might think. I just don’t like how they are in constant motion, as if their sole purpose for existing is to constantly agree with you. That’s too sad for me. I don’t like anything whose head is significantly larger than its body, so along with bobble heads, bulldogs kind of freak me out. I’m not crazy about statues, especially statues of angels. I’ve seen too many movies where their eyes open and follow you and it reminds me of the graves of ghost children. I can’t watch any scary movie. I don’t like mechanical Santas that move. I hated Showbiz Pizza which is now called Chuck-E-Cheese and my son will never ever have a party there. I pretty much hated and still hate any life-size figures that move and especially the ones that talk. They remind me of those Duracell people on those commercials. You remember those Duracell people? Sometime in the mid to late nineties, Duracell commercials featured a battery operated family of human-esque robots. I believe their names were the Puttermans. They were crazy, scary looking things. During one of the commercials the grandmother’s battery died while they were having a barbecue and the grandma fell face first into her plate of food. The family laughed. It freaked me out so bad. Cause I was like, hello, evil robots, your grandma just died. They just looked, I don’t know, soulless. This was also about the time that Nike came out with “Little Penny” Hardaway in their commercials. I shudder at the thought of that tiny black leprechaun.
Don’t ever say the word “Ferbie” to me, either.
Okay, so keeping in mind that I’m pretty much scared of every kind of toy ever made, imagine my reaction when my sister in law suggested that I buy my son the hot ticket item this year called a “Singamajig.” Pronounced Sing-a-ma-jig. She said that when she saw it she immediately thought of my son because he is always singing. Don’t get me wrong, from time to time I indulge in my son’s affection for toys that sing. I let him keep the Elmo Live he got last year at Christmas because Elmo is pretty harmless. That is until we lost Elmo’s little stool and when Elmo tried to sit down but kept falling over I heard over and over again, “Uh oh, Elmo fall down. Can you help Elmo?” I kind of let the batteries run out on that one. I looked up this Singamajig thing online. It looks cute and harmless enough. Its eyes don’t look soulless or vacant or ready to kill at will. It’s snuggly and soft. You push it and its mouth opens into an O shape and it sings a note. You keep pushing and it finishes the song. Now here’s what thoroughly freaks me out about it: it harmonizes with other Singamajig dolls. How does it know how to do that? Oh, you rational people out there with your Computer Science degrees know that it’s all about programming, but, doesn’t it seem a little Matrix-y to you? What else can it do, what else does it “sense?” Does it sense fear? Will it know as soon as I unwrap it that I’m deathly afraid of it? Will it be at the foot of my bed one night, its little mouth shaped into an O, and slowly climb up my body until I come face to face with the kind-of-monkey-shaped imp of my doom? Will it harmonize me to death? Laugh all you want. These things are hot and they are everywhere. I imagine some Japanese business man laughing his way to the bank and then on to world domination, being followed by his minions of tiny Singamajigs.
Of course I bought one for my son. Today I went into Toys R Us and I sheepishly asked, “Where are the Singamajigs?” I felt a flush of red come to my face. It’s pretty embarrassing as an adult to say a word like Singamajig, much less admit to the Universe that I am succumbing to consumer driven Christmas propaganda while trying to overcome the worst of my childhood fears. I tested several out before I decided on the blue one that sings “Skin-a-ma-rink-a-dinky-dink” or something like that. I even had a couple of them sing together before I managed to thoroughly freak myself out. No, I thought. No, I can’t go there. I am determined to not let my phobias ruin my son’s Christmases. Next year it will be some other creepy talking, singing, dancing thing so I just have to suck it up. I have a gut feeling that it’s going to be his favorite Christmas gift this year, one that he’ll want to take everywhere and show to everyone. He’ll be so proud that Santa brought him a Singamajig. It will be like his very own Cabbage Patch Doll, not freaking him out in the least bit. I have a feeling that on Christmas night, after my son goes to sleep and I’m hanging out on the couch sipping cocoa next to a roaring fire, that creepy little thing will open its mouth into an O and sing a note without me even touching it. And if it does, that son of a gun is going into the fire. Harmonize that, sucka.
No comments:
Post a Comment