Who’s Watching the Children?

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When I was 3, we lived in Westchester County, NY. I was the youngest of 3 girls with Lauren, 15 months older, and Debbie (now Devra) being 6 years older. My Nana or Aunt Roshi would usually babysit us, but occasionally my parents would need to hire a babysitter. When this happened, we’d usually have a neighborhood girl, Mickey Resicue, babysit us. One of our other neighbors living up the street had an age appropriate daughter, Joanne, who was a known bad seed. Joanne’s mother regularly would tell my Mom that her daughter loved the 3 of us and wanted to babysit us. She’d beg my Mom to just give Joanne a chance and to let her prove herself at least once. Joanne not only could be seen coming out of the woods blowing smoke rings, but had a much older boyfriend with a car. My Mom feared that Joanne might smoke in the house and burn it down or ignore the 3 of us, while she might be getting felt up in our rumpus room. Finally, one night, with no other choice of a babysitter, my Mom had little choice but to give the little scamp, Joanne, a shot at sitting for us.

My parents dressed up, as Joanne warmed up some Swanson Turkey TV Dinners; which already made it a special night for Lauren and me. On their way out, my Mom told Joanne that she’d be calling regularly and that no smoking or boys would be allowed in the house. Joanne told her not to worry that she’d play with us until our bedtime and would ensure that we got to bed on time. With that they cautiously left us for the evening in the hands of the bad seed babysitter.

First, we played a typical game of Candyland, which posed no danger as we travelled along the Gumdrop Mountains and Candy Cane Forest. That killed the first 20 minutes. We moved on to a heated Kerplunk Tournament and we were quickly growing bored. Joanne started holding the pick-up sticks like a missing cigarette. With a little time before bed, Lauren and I decided to have Joanne join us playing Barbie’s, before we would be read a bedtime story and sent off to dreamland. Since Lauren and I were not only Debbie’s younger sister, but we were the youngest girl cousins of a long line of girl cousins, we had hand-me-downs of probably some of the earliest Barbie’s and Ken’s not to mention a few of their predecessors from the Old Country. From my really old cousins with their then-1950’s state of the art dolls, we inherited Helga who had a thicker waist than Barbie along with the Shirley doll, who came with corrective shoes instead of Barbie’s “F-me pumps.” Debbie and Joanne did us a solid and took the Eastern Bloc Barbies. I chose my usual, Ken. Lauren got the premier pick of our newest Barbie, who probably was at least 10 years old by then.

As we nicely played, Joanne started filling our little pliable minds by pointing out that our Barbie and Ken couldn’t have Jones as their last name, as our models just weren’t keeping up. Joanne kept baiting us saying things like, “you know the new Barbies have real hair and not paint” or “have you seen how real the new Barbie looks? She even has bendable legs.” Just as Lauren and I started really feeling like the “Little Match Girl,” Joanne told our little Play-Doh brains that she could give our Barbie and Ken real hair and bendable legs. Being older, Debbie thought we should make the Helga and Shirley dolls our Fair Ladies before moving to the A-Listers, Ken and Barbie. Joanne pushed back saying that she never heard of a Shirley or Helga doll and how they certainly wouldn’t have real hair except maybe a moustache. She kept talking about how she wished she was our age and could’ve had the new Barbie and Ken. Lauren and I were hooked on plastonics and agreed that Joanne would become our Barbie and Ken stylist.

With Debbie watching the black and white tv, Joanne found the raw materials of the real hair drawing from her young charges. Lauren lost a few inches of her black curly locks to be sacrificed for Barbie, while Ken became the recipient of a strawberry blonde donation from me as less of my tress was need to coif a male doll. She explained that in the transformation process, the bendable leg process had to come ahead of the real hair attachment. She grabbed my mom’s cast iron pan and a stick of butter and got to work. Instead of going to a Barbie spa, Ken and Barbie were unceremoniously dumped into the frying pan to soften the legs into the new bendable versions. While the legs now bent, they also flattened a bit, as Joanne proceeded to glue our hair onto Barbie and Ken’s heads. The euphoria that Lauren and I felt was short-lived, as Barbie and Ken’s bendable legs cooled off and hardened and the Elmer’s clumped up under the hair. Forget the Barbie Dream House, this was a nightmare! Lauren and I cried ourselves to sleep with our new Barbie and Ken now ruined forever at the hands of Dr. Sitterstein.

When we woke up the next morning, my Mom had already walked up the street with her cast iron pan with its Barbie leg residue telling Joanne’s Mom that her daughter would never again be trusted to take care of her daughters, our dolls, or even her cookware. Later that day, my Mom made an arts and crafts project out of de-wigging Ken and Barbie and painting their heads with real looking hair. Fortunately, that bad seed kept her freaky hands off of my favorite toy leaving Raggedy Andy unscathed.