Day 2

[bironic]

Holy crap, guys. Day one has more than doubled the largest single-day comment count from last year. I'm so thrilled by the turnout (so far: 14 participants, 6 countries), and hearing all these memories, and seeing everybody talk to each other, and just, yay.

A memory today that should not result in a page full of descriptions of people's injuries:

2. Elementary School

I used to play with Barbie dolls (and, a little later, Legos, with which I'd enact complicated hostage scenarios involving shifting alliances on both sides of town and lots of air/ground/underwater destruction, but that's another story), but not always in the way most kids played with Barbie dolls. At least, I didn't think so at the time. I bet it wasn't that uncommon after all, especially not in these circles.

I have this one clear memory of taking a doll called Maxi -- I don't know if that was the name of the line, like Barbie, or if we'd just named her Maxi, but she was differently shaped from the Barbies and had flexible feet -- stripping her and tying her to the side of the Barbie motorhome, I think, or something tall and sturdy. I remember that it wasn't an unusual situation for my Barbies to find themselves in, although I don't remember exactly what I used to do after this: whether one of the male dolls (my sister and I each had a Ken doll and a New Kids on the Block doll) was behind the abduction, whether it went any further than being tied up, whether I even knew at that age what could come afterwards. I do remember that it always gave me a little thrill and that I knew it was something to be ashamed of and so I did it all covertly in the corner of the room because my sister was playing with her own Barbies on the carpet next to me and I didn't want her to see.
 
 

Comments

[stephantom.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha

You know, I don't think it's that uncommon. My older sisters have a pretty absurd story that's very similar. (This is more their memory than mine, since my memory is just hearing it retold, but.)

Their was this doll named Jem that was (like Maxi, I guess) not quite Barbie. She had bigger feet and broader hips and shoulders, so Barbie's clothes wouldn't fit her right. My sisters didn't like her. So... they had this... ritual of a sort, lol. Jem was stripped and the words "JEM IS DUM" were written all over her in pen, and her hair was shaved. And the other Barbies stood around her chanting "Jem is dumb!" And then they hung her upside-down in the closet.

...where my mom found it a day or so later and was a bit alarmed. lol

I never really played with Barbies at all. I was a Playmobil (http://store.playmobilusa.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-CA-Site) girl. I did sometimes treat certain Little People (as I called them) worse than others, though. But it was always the ones I liked. There'd always be some little kids that were put off somewhere on their own. I'd get mad if family members moved them, because they were over there because they were poor and orphans. And I was coming back to them (they were the main characters after all). It just had to be established that they were outcasts. lol

[bironic.livejournal.com]

One girl ostracizes the dolls she identifies with, while her sisters communally humiliate the doll they don't like. I want a psychologist to participate in this post. :D

I remember Playmobil (Lego wannabes!), although we didn't have any, and I remember the cartoon Jem -- she was a rock star with a guitar, wasn't she?

[roga.livejournal.com]

The way my sister and I played with Barbies was almost always the same: We'd dress up our Barbie heroine with as many layers of mismatching clothes as we could, and mess up her hair so all the other Barbies and Kens thought she was really fat and ugly. Then, at the very end of the game, she'd shed all her clothes (well, almost all *g*) and they'd discover she was a beautiful knockout and EAT THEIR HEARTS OUT.

...kind of classic, I think. Possibly based on an episode of Married With Children (more so than on the Ugly Duckling, because like in that episode of MWC, our heroine was often an exchange student). And oddly (or not?), we never got tired of playing the same plot over and over and over again...

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Aw. (You didn't mean she'd literally eat their hearts out, did you? Because that would've been awesome.) Did she spurn them for being so superficial or graciously accept their apologies?

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

*grin* At least this one won't produce quite such a gruesome list. Although the results could be even more interesting, of course.

I didn't really have Barbies, but I had all the My Little Ponies (and the Nursery and the Castle) and most of the He-Man and She-Ra action figures. Like yours, they would be involved in long, complicated and intricate plots, where one of them would be kidnapped and the others would have to rescue them. My Lego figures (I had the Robin Hood set) were subjected to similar abductions. The only problem was that I wanted to be in the stories, and I was so much bigger than them!

I solved this my switching my interest to tying myself to things - the imaginary baddie would kidnap *me* (I'm an only child ;)) and I had to get myself free. The headboard on my bed had poles at intervals just wide enough for me to get my wrists through, and I once tied myself to a chairbed so tightly that my mother had to use a fork to ease the knot loose. I remember that one vividly, since I had to drag the wretched thing to the door of the living room and yell up the stairs for five minutes for her to come rescue me.

[roga.livejournal.com]

It varied :-) Sometimes she'd get the guy, who apologized profusely and played doormat for the (projected) next year. Sometimes she'd say to hell with them all, guys and girls, and go on to become rich and successful. Sometimes through business, and sometimes through revealing that she'd been stinking rich all this time and kept it a secret, in a Shakespearean kind of twist, long before I'd heard of deus-ex-machina.

And no, she never actually ate their hearts out. I'm trying to think of other games I played now, if they ever reached that cannabalistic level of disturbing, but somewhat disappointingly, none of my play-characters ever ate each other's hearts.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

somewhat disappointingly, none of my play-characters ever ate each other's hearts.

Mine did! Of course, they were dinosaurs, and the hearts (and other things) they were eating were my sister's Barbies, but it's close enough. My sister still bitches about how my brother and I were always ganging up on her Barbies.

[roga.livejournal.com]

When you're a kid, you really don't figure that your siblings will remember everything you do for the rest of your life. But then it's fifteen years later, and they still remind you of your terrible first grade hairdo (moms decided first grade hairdos, okay, leave the poor kids alone!) and that time you pushed in line in front of them in Disneyland.

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

She was! Freezepop (http://www.freezepop.net) covered the theme song. :-)

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

I had Barbies but I don't remember what I did playing with them (again with the vast memory gaps.) I do remember playing with bags of styrofoam cups, stacking them into pyramids ... and I had all the posable Care Bears figurines (which kind of rocked) and I'd make cardboard box dollhouses for them. I think I still remember how. A triumph of seven year old cardboard engineering.
The Boy (who is autistic/blind/nonverbal) has odd toy choices. His favorites right about now are those travel toothbrush cases and plastic bottles: he likes to blow across the top. And his trampoline. :-)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

What glorious and inspiring paths for your doll! LOL. I love it.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Hee!

Most of my dinosaur toys were stuffed. The man-killers were my big Lego robot and island cannibals.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to see how you explained the situation to your mother when she rescued you. *g*

A lot of the scenarios I devised for my own toys were abduction/rescue ones, as were the plots acted out by my brother (1 year older than me) and me. A lot of the play-acting plots also involved torture and space aliens; the latter was probably due to the influence of Star Trek (the original series).

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

*grin* It made about as much sense as my explanations ever do. I was six and pretending to be a horse. And when you arrive somewhere, you tie the horse to the whatever. And all I had was a chairbed... My logic has not improved much over the years :)

As soon as I was old enough to comprehend the whole 'plot' thing, I was acting out the stories. Of course, I had to use invisible adversaries, and spent much time with my eyes closed, pretending they were there, but still. I must have rescued/been rescued by She-Ra a hundred times :D

[bironic.livejournal.com]

My Little Ponies! Robin Hood Lego! With the black castle pieces and the plastic vines and the feathered caps! That was my first Lego set, which actually is/was on the list of potential memories for another day.

I solved this my switching my interest to tying myself to things - the imaginary baddie would kidnap *me* (I'm an only child ;)) and I had to get myself free.

I think I love you. Wish I'd had a bed like that, or the bravery to try to tie myself to stuff instead of just pretending to do it under the covers at night!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Yes yes yes yes yes. I envy you a companion in the play-acting! My fantasies (unabashedly Star Trek, unabashedly kidnap/rescue) were all performed alone in the secrecy of after-bed darkness.

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

*grin* SNAP! I think Robin Hood was my first fandom - to this day, I know most of the script of the Disney film.

the bravery to try to tie myself to stuff
Bravery...stupidity...it's a fine line. I often used to end up tied to things that I couldn't get out of again. I was nearly permanently attached with a skipping rope to a piano stool at my youth club. Once I figured out the whole 'risking blood supply' thing, I made do with the headboard :D

[bironic.livejournal.com]

There's something to be said for the ability to be easily amused. :)

I don't remember much of what I did with the Barbies the rest of the time, other than brief flashes of posing them in their cars, hot tub, ice cream shop (or was that My Little Pony?) or office settings.

We had the plastic Care Bears too! One had a rainbow cloud car that was just fantastic. For some reason, we tended to play with them when we were playing with Play-Doh instead of when we were inside with the Barbies, unless I'm misremembering that. Hmmm. Your cardboard houses sound very cool.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

You know, I always mistreated the dolls/stuffed animals/whatever that I liked the best, too. And you know what? Thinking about my writing/RPing? I never outgrew it.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

*g* A middle ground, then. I was too SEKRITLY ASHAMED OF MY DEVIANT PROCLIVITIES to advertise them in public.

The Disney cartoon is great. I don't know how many times we watched it when we were kids, but it was early enough and often enough that it imprinted a lot of random things on me, like what gold coins in a bag look and sound like.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a coincidence that we enact the same or similar stories or behaviors with writing now that we did with dolls/Legos/etc. as kids. Fic writing is (among other things) fantasy for grownups, yeah?

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Oh, Robin Hood. ♥ He's animated. He's not human. I'm meant to be an adult. And I still think he's damn hot. XDDD

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Cartoon Robin Hood = Sirius Black, y/n?

[recrudescence.livejournal.com]

I don't know, for someone who writes a lot of angst and porn, I was very much a cracky AUer with my Barbies and My Little Ponies. I'd make them all join the circus and give each one a new persona, or I'd cast them as all the roles in whatever Disney movie struck my fancy...

Oh. Wait. Then I majored in theatre and anthropology. Lol.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

*g* Any favorite scenarios you remember?

Fair enough. I'm in somewhat the same situation in the opposite direction -- I don't let the twisted hurt/comfort BDSM scenarios that began in my childhood bleed into my LJ fic-writing much.