Fun with Jewel Secrets Whitney ( who has had her bald spots rerooted with purple hair and been put on a made to move body).

Here is a story about A Barbie.  

You may have heard the bulk of it before if you’ve known me a long time, but this past weekend, it came full circle and I thought I would share.

When I was eight or nine, I became completely infatuated with ancient Egypt.  Everything I could get my hands on, I devoured.  Vague hieroglyphs were learned and used to pass notes to my friend, information was learned about archaeology and religion was questioned, Halloween costumes were worn, books were read, an oracle was held in the coat room which got me kicked out of the room and a secret tomb cult was created on the playground which got me confronted by the other kids for worshiping Satan.

So, as you sometimes got to do in elementary school, I one day was in a Toys R Us, walking down what was The Pink Aisle (though I now reflect that the boxes were pinker back then, but the dolls are pinker now), and I approached the fancy glass case at the end of the aisle where they displayed the Fancy Barbies.   The collector dolls.  The ones you had to get a special yellow ticket for and then they’d hand you your doll at The Expensive Shit Counter.  And that’s where I saw Egyptian Queen Barbie for $49.99 and promptly lost my fourth grade mind.

I needed that doll in a way similar to needing air?  I resolved to save every cent I had until I had the total for that doll, including the fucking tax.  As an elementary student, I had three sources of income: good report cards, holidays, and loose teeth.  The saving went slowly.  I believed in a god back then and prayed that I would save up money in time to get the doll.  Several more trips were made to Toys R Us as I saved and at each one I checked that she was still there and pressed my hands against the glass like I was trying to communicate with the doll.  Please wait for me, I have twenty-seven dollars and sixty three cents.

I saved for what had to be months.  A report card was every six weeks, and that might net me 10 or 20 dollars if my grandparents also saw it.   A tooth might be 1 to 5 dollars depending on the tooth fairy’s generosity or the size of the tooth lost.  As far as I can remember, my birthday September 1st must have been what put me over the 53 dollars and change I needed to get this doll.  

We went to Toys R Us, and I ran to the glass case with my money and the space where Egyptian Queen Barbie had been was Empty.  

I think I might have been in shock.  I may have cried.  I begged whoever was with me to ask someone if they had her in the back.  There were none.  

I was told, since we’d come all this way and I had the money, why not get another doll from the special case.  I selected Medieval Lady Barbie, who was still a thing I jived with, but not what I had waited my whole fourth grade life to get.  

Despite that I had saved up all that money on my own, I was told I could not open the doll, because she was a collector piece.  The box said, ‘collectors age 14 and up’.   I was age 14 and down.  

When I got her home, I used to look at the fabrics in the box and try to find things in my house that felt like her dress would - something velvet, something with that ribbon.  I wondered what her shoes looked like.  I was driven slightly mad that her necklace didn’t sit right and her eyes looked a little blurry and her hat did not expose as much hair as I thought it should.  

A few times, I pried at the corner of the box, hoping that if I just did it often enough, it would accidentally come open, and I could see the doll.  But she was glued in at both ends - no tabs or little circles of tape I could easily replace.  If this doll was opened, everyone would know it had happened.  

Somewhat predictably to people reading this now, but not to me at the time, I received Egyptian Queen Barbie for Christmas that year and was so excited I started shaking, dropped the doll on the floor, and started crying. 

I was not allowed to open her either. 

I remember walking to school telling my friends that Today would be The Day and I would open that doll whether my dad said it was okay or not, because what could he do once it had been opened?   My bravado would vanish by the time school was out because I was scared of my dad and had thought of many many things he could do.  I convinced myself I liked them better in the boxes.  They were displayed nicely, it made them easy to store, all neat little squares.  Holiday Barbies and Limited Editions and Dolls of the World and everything that was over 40 dollars stayed firmly in that box.  

I called friends and told them I knew what the dolls felt like because I’d searched out the look alike fabric.  I’d read the boxes over and over.  I rearranged the big boxes in my limited bedroom space.  

You may have noticed I’ve accumulated a lot of dolls, haha.  You may also have noticed I don’t take pictures of dolls in boxes.  

This past weekend, I took my girlfriend to my mom and step-dad’s basement, where I had smuggled my things to as I slowly moved out of my dad’s house without him realizing until it was too late, introduced my girlfriend to my parents, and then began pulling Barbie boxes out of giant plastic totes.  

And I looked at the creases on the box where a smaller me and tried to just wiggle her finger under the sealed top of the book-shaped box, and I finished the job 20 some years later and I opened Egyptian Queen Barbie.  I was content and I was okay until I felt a little charm hanging from her sash.  It had never been visible in my doll’s packaging.  I’d seen it in official promotional images, but thought it had been taken out of the final doll because mine didn’t have it.  But she did.  I had not known for over 20 years.  When I held the charm in my hand is when I started crying.  And I kept crying right through putting on her sandals (!), which I’d only ever seen through a cutout window in a box, smashed in a tiny plastic bag at the bottom of the package.

I opened everyone else the next day (Medieval Lady Barbie has cute gold shoes with turned up toes!), but Egyptian Queen Barbie is still filling me with feelings I can’t put into words, despite how many I’ve used here.  She’s standing next to me while I type, and I almost can’t believe she’s there and not box shaped.  I’m going to be able to get this one single hair off her face and see how her arms look down at her sides.  

And she’s mine regardless of how far ‘up’ I am from fourteen now.  

three eyes got a trim last night. I think I’m taking baby steps toward the hairstyle I imagined when I was inspired to make her, haha

(And one day she’ll have a name that isn’t three eyes)