Kids Growing Up Too Fast: A Look Back at My Own Childhood

When I was a kid, I had a pretty epic Barbie collection. Nowadays, with all of the harsh critical (and with reason) spotlights on Barbie, I’m really not into the idea of Scarlet playing with her and her cohorts. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I suppose. For now, she’s blissfully (for me) unaware of Barbie’s existence. But I knew what was up when I was a kid.

I was a cool (and potentially psychologically damaged) Barbie player. My Barbies drove a silver Corvette, borrowed (stolen) from my older sister. They also worked at the Barbie McDonald’s. They also dated. Also, they..had relations. Admit it. Your Barbies had relations, right? I know plenty of my friends who agree with me. And just a few who look horrified and appalled at the rest of us. What can I say? My Barbies had a good time. I even made them anatomically correct. I’m not embarrassed to say.

I drew nipples on them with a pink sharpie, not red, because red nipples don’t sound healthy. I also cut a bit of their hair and glued it on..oh, never mind. My parents and sister love telling that story along with the story of how I got a pussywillow stuck up my nose when I was four or five. A doctor had to remove it. Months later. I’m pretty sure this explains at least some of my allergy/ear/sinus troubles that plague me every spring. None of this embarrasses me. Out in the open for good, I say.

I also marked nearly all of my Ranger Rick magazines by drawing genitals and breasts on the animals. Mostly penguins. They weren’t exempt from my artistic perversion. My mom didn’t know I did this at first. She owns an art school. One day she had an amazing idea to take my old Ranger Rick magazines and give them to her students to learn to draw animals. Imagine the wave of hysterical laughter that can ring through an art classroom, one by one, genital-vandalized magazine by one.

Along with my anatomically correct Barbies, I had Jem dolls. Specifically, Jem and Kimberly. Remember Kimberly?:

She was a hot babe, in my toy circle. The thing about the Jem dolls is that they were so much bigger and fuller than Barbies. I was always amazed by how much they towered over Barbie. Their heads and clothes were huge. They were delicious to me, actually. Peaches and cream skin and lovely, big eyes, making Barbie look so puny and under-formed in comparison.

This is going to sound nuts, and really I shouldn’t talk about my kids in the same blog I talk about my perverted doll collection, but since I brought Des home from the hospital, Scarlet has positively risen to huge proportions since. Her body and head are huge. Is it comparison to a newborn? Is it her own growth? Probably both. Perspective has changed, sure. She has grown, definitely. I keep picturing my Kimberly Jem doll as I wash Scarlet’s lovely huge head and comb her insanely long and full hair. This is not to say that Des is a puny Barbie. It’s just that…I”m a visual person. She’s lovelier than Kimberly can ever hope to be, but I can’t help picturing my old doll comparisons every time I look at her lately. She’s small for her age…

…but gigantic in my perspective.

I took her for her three year well visit last week. She’s healthy as a horse, of course. I couldn’t watch the whole thing because I had to tend to Des – the vision test, hearing test, blood work, much less the actual exam itself. I caught all of the good parts, though, like when the nurse thought she either had a vision problem or didn’t know her letters until the nurse realized my girl was pulling her leg. This was followed by Scarlet, in a very clear voice, reading every single letter correctly from the opposite side of the hallway.

She flinched for a second during her blood draw and was calm and still as possible otherwise. The nurse said, “If they were all like that, my job would be perfect.” What surprised me the most about the exam is how guided it was by the doctors, nurses and Scarlet. For all other exams, I had to answer tons of questions. For this exam, Scarlet did. I really didn’t have to do much except listen and laugh and worry and then feel better when all was well.

Three is a big age. Big personality and big brains and dreams. She knows what’s up. She remembers everything. And she misses nothing. She’s such a big kid now. I can’t tell if it makes me want my time with Des to speed up until he has such a big personality, or if I want it to slow down, so I can revel in the now-ness, knowing the wonder that lies ahead. Way, way past three. It all just gets better. And scarier.

But better.

And we can only hope, and slightly see, that she may have better taste in dolls than I did: