I was never into dolls. My daughter used to cart around “babies” and dress Barbies, but she didn’t learn it from me. My childhood memories consist of carefully pushing steel pins into earlobes, chopping off hair, and ink-staining plastic parts. I do know how to dress dolls, and have even managed successful tea parties, but only because my previous job required doll-play with preschoolers, and my daughter demanded equal time. (I remain grateful that her long-suffering dad often took on doll duty). Dolls were just not my thing.
Despite my aberrant childhood, there is Kimmy Doll. I don’t remember where she came from or even remember playing with her. I assume she arrived with her name but not, as far as I can recall, any clothing. My former students told me she looked like Chucky, and that her face was leering and creepy, but to me Kimmy Doll was always innocently beautiful.
She’s not traditionally beautiful, I admit. Just under a foot in height, her pudgy, bulbous-bellied body is made of age-hardened pink plastic. Her head and arms are slightly softer plastic, the pink discolored by years of ground in grime and oxidation. She is knock-kneed, and when she is stood upright she will fall onto her face no matter in what position her feet are placed. Both heels are broken open with cracks (and I suspect puppy chewing) and there isn’t an inch of her that doesn’t bear a dirty scratch or scrape. Kimmy’s butt has a peak like Daffy Duck’s, and her head is huge and very round. She sports a tangled mess of curly, short nylon hair that may have been auburn originally, but is now an indescribable blend of pinky/brown-y/reddish-y nylon plugs thrust into her scalp like laces into a baseball. The back of her head is bald in the manner of a neglected infant left too long to writhe in its crib. When I hold her, I can faintly smell laundry soap, but it doesn’t quite cover the tang of what is likely puppy pee. For some reason (perhaps to keep her from teething puppies) I liked to hang her on the wall at work. To lessen the impact of her naked splendor on more refined senses, my husband designed her a tiny moss bag, and one of my students topped her curls with a wreath of yellow and green ribbons to match those adorning her moss bag. Thusly dressed, Kimmy overlooked my desk in the classrooms in which I worked.
I’m not sure why this unusual little doll was important enough for me to save through numerous moves and life transitions for well over half a century. As an adult, I suspect accepting my own Kimmy-shaped form came from loving her, rather than a statuesque Barbie. I hated being a girl (my dad often emphasized that he wanted more boys) but I suspect she is a sign that, despite all my attempts to be a tomboy, something in me still had feminine leanings. Or perhaps I identified with her thumb-sucking stance, as I was a committed sucker into my teens. Perhaps I felt sorry for her naked, cocky self. I don’t know. But I do know that Kimmy Doll will remain with me as long as possible because I love her pale, pudgy, rotund, smiling self.
Cathy Bendle finds humor in the quirks of everyday life, from training teachers to dodging housework. When not writing, she’s either laughing at her pets, frantically Googling for her work assignments, or playing on her iPad.
