The Great Doll Funeral

Vintage baby doll

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The same Christmas I got Rocky the Rocking Horse, the best Christmas present of my young life, and Monkey, my sidekick(until I left him outside for the dogs to chew up),  I got a big hard, plastic baby-doll with molded hair.  It came with a bottle, was dressed in pajamas and had exactly one diaper. That diaper was history once Mother demonstrated its amazing ability to pee its diaper. It made me mad when I saw the baby doll, anyhow, since I’d told Mother, “I don’t want a doll.  I hate dolls.”  The wet diaper was the last straw.  I pitched it into the bowels of the toy box to keep company with Tinker Toys, broken crayons, and last year’s despised doll.

Before Christmas this year when Mother asked what I wanted, my list included a live pony, cowboy boots, pistols and holsters and a real monkey in a cowboy suit.  My list did not include a doll.  Insanely, she had insisted, “But, every little girl has to get a doll.  Now what kind do you want?”

Remembering last year’s floppy baby doll, I tried to come up with something I could stomach.  I heard girls at school say they wanted a Bride Doll.  In my complete disinterest, I forgot exactly what kind of doll to ask for. “Uh, I GUESS a wedding doll would do.”  I didn’t want one,  but at least it wasn’t a stupid baby doll. When another baby doll showed up under the tree, I was disgusted, thinking I had confused Mother into thinking I wanted a “wetting doll, not a “wedding doll.”    Daddy handed me my final gigantic gift from under the tree.  Since I’d already gotten Rocky the Rocking Horse as a pony substitute and a stuffed monkey instead of real-live monkey in a cowboy suit, this was my last shot at pistols and a holster set.  I ripped into the package, and horror of horrors, discovered a tin tea-set with a Dutch Boy and Girl on a background of blue and yellow tulips.  Mother went into raptures over it.

“Oh, I always wanted a tea-set like this when I was a little girl.”  Well, if she’d had that tea-set and I had a feather up my butt, we’d have both been tickled to death.  Fortunately, I’d learned long ago to keep my mouth shut when I didn’t like presents.  Rocky and Monkey and I went on our way, making the best of that Christmas.  That tea-set, still in the box, went under my bed.

Months later, one of the neighbors died.  I didn’t get to go to the funeral, of course, but my cousin did.  It sounded pretty entertaining to me.  We decided to stage our own.  I scavenged through the toy box and found my Christmas doll and dug the tea-set out from under my bed.  Dumping the dishes, I lined the box with one of Mother’s better towels and we prepared the body for burial.  My cousin Sue and I conducted the services, complete with plenty of hymns and wailing.  My brother Billy and Cousin Troy attended, but only because we promised to provide penny candy afterward.  It was a lovely service, the burial site mounded up with gorgeous roses we’d rounded up from the bushes belonging to Mrs. Dick, the seventh-grade teacher who lived next to us.  Mother made us return the roses to Mrs. Dick and apologize, though I can’t imagine they’d have been much use to her since we’d snapped them all off right below the head.  There would have been enough of them to fill a tub for a romantic rose bath, though I seriously doubt the lady was in the mood judging from the expression on her face when we apologized.

23 thoughts on “The Great Doll Funeral”

  2. Loved this one. I think we led parallel childhoods. I was a total Tom boy, I asked for double six guns Hop a Long Cassidy if possible, got the doll and a doctor’s medical kit instead. When you tipped her forward and then back she said mama. I took her into the pantry and did surgery on her and cut out the box from her stomach with my mothers scissor, the stethoscope hanging around my neck. I removed all the stuffing. Her body was made of cloth. My parents were so upset with me for ruining the baby doll and told me that Santa would be sad.

    “What do you have to say for yourself Patti”?

    “Well, I asked him for Hop a Long Cassidy six guns and he left me that stupid doll and the doctors kit so I figured I would operate on her”.

    I never got another doll or the six guns but my brother did the following year. He let me use them whenever we played cowboys and Indians. He was younger than me and I could talk him into anything. :o)

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