Aviva and Barbie
God, I hated dolls. I think the only reason I had any was that I was brainwashed into wanting them by children’s advertising. The first Barbie I remember getting was one given me at Christmas (this was when I was young enough for my parents to give me both a Hanukkah and a Christmas—1970-1972, when I was seven or so). I didn’t just get a single Barbie, no ma’am. I got Barbie plus a big pink battery-powered monstrosity which I remember as some kind of fashion show (it may have had a wedding theme). You slid Barbie’s feet into little plastic shoes—I believe they were tilted to represent high heels—and flipped a switch, and Barbie was propelled jerkily down a "runway," spun around, and propelled jerkily back up, ad nauseum. That is, if she didn’t fall over because her feet weren’t properly installed in the plastic shoes.
My chief method of gleaning entertainment out of this glitzy piece of crap was not to dress up Barbie in different outfits and squeal in envy as she "officially" displayed her taste to the world. Instead, I spent my time trying to cram poor Barbie’s feet backwards into the plastic shoes, or putting just one foot in and sending her on her way, or seeing how much she could tilt without falling over, or trying to make her do handstands in the plastic shoes. I also liked to try to speed up the runway by tugging on Barbie while she was moving. No doubt this last activity contributed to the premature demise of the runway and the subsequent abandonment of an expensive toy that would probably have been worth megabux today.
Some years later, pre-teen and no fonder of dolls than I’d ever been, I inexplicably bought a Barbie with a "kung fu grip"—it wasn’t a kung fu grip, of course, but the principle was the same. If you bent her wrists so that the palms of her hands faced the floor, her thumbs closed on her palms; if you raised her hands palm up, her hands opened. The idea was that Barbie could pick up and hold things, especially her little purse. (Anything heavier than, say, a penny slipped right out, however.) My only explanation for this peculiar purchase was that I must have been fascinated by the gimmicky nature of this doll.
Of course, bar the hands, this Barbie was the same old same old, and I lost interest in it about five minutes after I’d unwrapped it. With boredom comes evil thoughts. This unfortunate Barbie would have been better off in the hands of the Nazis. Here’s a list of what I did to her:
