I really can’t blame anyone for how I turned out -- there’s too much evidence of my scowly nature (much modified now) in photographs of my earliest years. Slouching and glaring at my grandmother’s side. Humorlessly clutching my naked rubber doll (I refused all offers to clothe her) with her perfect, frenzied hairdon’t. And if, captured beaming over my new baby-doll carriage, I appeared at all cute, you should know that I invoked the toddler equivalent of “Touch it and die” to anyone who got too close.
I defended my baby-doll carriage because I knew the kind of emotion it could inspire -- as it had the first time I’d seen one, in the backyard next door to my grandparents’. Despite the fact it was being pushed around by the little girl who lived there, I had only one word for the thing once spotted: Mine.
While the adults all around surely expressed their opinions of me and the single word I shouted over and over as I chased and swatted at my rival, I heard only the faint voice coming from my own head. Perhaps something is vaguely amiss here? it whispered, more sense than language. Is “mine” really the right word for this occasion?
I didn’t have time for such ponderings -- she was getting away.
I don’t recall -- and can’t imagine -- the hell I put everybody through from those moments until I had my own baby-doll carriage to claim, in those short years before my multiplying siblings made making such demands impossible. And I don’t even remember who got it for me.
But I bet they drove pretty fast.
I defended my baby-doll carriage because I knew the kind of emotion it could inspire -- as it had the first time I’d seen one, in the backyard next door to my grandparents’. Despite the fact it was being pushed around by the little girl who lived there, I had only one word for the thing once spotted: Mine.
While the adults all around surely expressed their opinions of me and the single word I shouted over and over as I chased and swatted at my rival, I heard only the faint voice coming from my own head. Perhaps something is vaguely amiss here? it whispered, more sense than language. Is “mine” really the right word for this occasion?
I didn’t have time for such ponderings -- she was getting away.
I don’t recall -- and can’t imagine -- the hell I put everybody through from those moments until I had my own baby-doll carriage to claim, in those short years before my multiplying siblings made making such demands impossible. And I don’t even remember who got it for me.
But I bet they drove pretty fast.
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