The last doll I ever asked for was Baby Heather. I was nine--which is weird, because most girls that age consider themselves grown-ass women by then. Sure, there were Barbies and Jem dolls still in the mix, but most nine-year-old girls had moved on from mothering inanimate objects to planning relationships with boys who would still be playing with Tonka trucks in elastic-waist sweatpants for another year or three before they realized girls were paying attention.
Baby Heather, however, was a piece of baby doll technology too ground-breaking for even a "grown-ass" nine-year-old to resist, with computerized innards you could program to coincide with 3 stages of infancy: newborn, 3 months, and 6 months. The extent of Baby Heather's "programming" was like setting an infant-shaped alarm clock, so that she would sleep, cry, drink from a bottle, or pretend to eat from a spoon at various times during the day. I realize now she was kind of like a project from a high school heath class, whose intent is to traumatize youth into responsible reproductive choices. Had I been exposed to any Child's Play movies by that point in my life, I probably would have vehemently passed on what amounted to Chucky's docile infant sister--short on the "murder" part, but chock-fucking-full of the creepy mechanical eyes that fly open and shift around independently in their sockets. Fortunately, I was none the wiser at the time--and totally fascinated by the concept of a doll that moved and made noises independently of me.
Unlike the real baby I'd later have, whom I'd smuggle to the farthest corner of the bonus room and practically smother with a pillow so he wouldn't wake the house with his wailing from 2-4 AM--Baby Heather wasn't life-like enough to actually wake me up in the middle of the night. But as it turns out, I was only so intrigued by her technological advance. The minimal "programming" she required quickly grew tiresome for me and I eventually just shut her down for good. I'm happy to say my neglect was not foreshadowing of my future parenting skills, but rather the harbinger of all the future TVs, DVD players, wireless speakers, and various electronics I would eventually dismiss with a shoulder-shrug if I was forced to crack the instruction manual for more than 5 minutes.
The saddest part of Baby Heather's brief tenure is how god-awful expensive she was. I cringe at the thought of how much my parents paid and how little I actually played with her. A much more sound investment of my parents' money was a hulking piece of pig-tailed machinery named Cricket. My youngest sister Caroline got her as a gift at some point in the late 80's and played with her so incescently that Cricket's voice was effectively seared onto my auditory cortex forever after.
Cricket was about the size of the average 4-year-old, with a giant head the weight and circumference of a bowling ball. Her mouth mechanically opened and closed in time with a tape-recorder lodged in her thoracic cavity. It was meant to make her look like she was talking along with the cassette, but made her appear instead like she was repeatedly gumming the air or gnawing an invisible turkey leg. She wasn't mine to play with, obviously, but I still remember tentatively inserting different objects into her mouth--a plastic spoon, my pinky finger, a pencil eraser--then watching curiously as she continued on with her story, completely unperturbed. Her shockingly large eyes blinked intermittently and darted suspiciously from side to side at random intervals, like she'd just robbed a bank and was keeping an eye out for the fuzz while trying to "act natural".
Her hair was toe-head blonde and pulled back into a pair of spunky little pigtails, with bangs that formed one continuous half-pipe of curl across her forehead. She wore a pink striped sweater that was not, in fact, a turtleneck, but somehow came up to her chin, suggesting mild strangulation might be the reason her eyeballs were practically bulging out of her face. Her sensible, mint-green skirt hit just about her unbending plastic knees, like the bottom half of a uniform from a private school whose colors were "toothpaste" or "algae bloom".
With her pink high-tops that screamed "Punky Brewster" and her monogrammed shoelaces that whispered "Blair" from Facts of Life, Cricket was an enigmatic Frankenstein of fashion sense--not unlike your typical 4-year-old in real life. She came with a set of story books, accompanied the by cassettes that triggered the chomping motion of her mouth as she shared riveting accounts of her exploits, such as "Cricket Takes A Vacation" and "Cricket Visits The Zoo". Other tape sets (sold separately, of course) came with outfits pertaining to their story, like a sporty headband and sweatsuit bearing the phrase "Am I fit or what?" Cricket was a real sucker for catch-phrases, like "Picture this!" to set up key points of her story or "I'll...be...TALKIN' to ya!" as her signature close. But her absolute favorite was "Am I ___ or what?", a kind of rhetorical tic she would populate with different adjectives. While my first choice for that blank would most likely be "creepy" and my obvious answer would be "yes"--the word Cricket chose to insert would always be somehow related to the story she was telling: "Am I tired or what?"..."Am I hungry or what?". "Am I obnoxious or--?" Yep.
But again, this was Caroline's doll--and she was entirely undeterred by Cricket's haunting demeanor, her penchant for catch phrases, or her ability to talk without pausing for the full-length of a 10-minute cassette. Besides, no one in the house could argue with any activity that completely consumed Caroline's preschool-aged attention for half-hours at a time--which is why Sleeping Beauty was shown on a continuous loop in the living room--and why Cricket's voice echoed through the house morning, noon, and night. At the end of the day, Cricket told stories--just like the old Disney records my sister Marie and I sat eagerly cross-legged in front of as they played, listening for the "chime" that told us when to turn the page in our fairy tale books.
Caroline was a full 4 years younger than me and 6 years younger than Marie, which meant the world was already ditching their vinyl for cassettes by the time Caroline was out of diapers. In fact, Cricket was the first in a long line of "next-generation" toys and gadgets ushered in at the very dawn of the Millennial era. As late as high school, Marie and I were still burning through white out trying to key 5-paragraph essays into our electric typewriter. By the time Caroline's turn came along, computers not only wrote papers, but served as the vehicle for email and Instant Messenger, making Caroline the first person, for better or worse, to use the term "lol" in face-to-face conversation with me. Had Cricket stuck around through an update or two, I imagine her "...Or what?" script would have eventually evolved to include "LOL!", "WTF!" or "FML!"--and she would most definitely be on Instagram or Snapchat, sitting stunned and stationary next to her pint of craft beer or riding shotgun on her friend's speed boat.
Though I'm pretty sure Cricket and Baby Heather both met the same fate of yard-sale oblivion, I can honestly contend that Cricket lived a much longer, fuller life than her crying, gurgling infant counter part. I will always remember Caroline, with matching pigtails, happily lugging Cricket around like a wide-eyed corpse whose rigor mortis had frozen her face in a permanent smile... Cricket had a good run, though. The whole house got their money's worth out of that one.
Caroline and I have both been adults for some time now, but with her birthday approaching, I recently looked into the availability of Cricket paraphernalia. After all, what does a female in her early thirties want more than to decorate her living space with an over-sized vintage doll that's guaranteed to scare the shit out of her and anyone she invites over?
Nostalgic as my intentions might have been, the mental picture of an artificial 4-year-old, folded in half and staring out of the tattered cardboard box, like a murder victim ordered off Amazon--was enough to curb the impulse of sending Caroline an actual Cricket. Instead, I decided my fond reflections on her old friend might just be enough, along with my best wishes for a wonderful day and the promise that "I'll...be... TALKIN' to ya!" very, very soon!
Baby Heather, however, was a piece of baby doll technology too ground-breaking for even a "grown-ass" nine-year-old to resist, with computerized innards you could program to coincide with 3 stages of infancy: newborn, 3 months, and 6 months. The extent of Baby Heather's "programming" was like setting an infant-shaped alarm clock, so that she would sleep, cry, drink from a bottle, or pretend to eat from a spoon at various times during the day. I realize now she was kind of like a project from a high school heath class, whose intent is to traumatize youth into responsible reproductive choices. Had I been exposed to any Child's Play movies by that point in my life, I probably would have vehemently passed on what amounted to Chucky's docile infant sister--short on the "murder" part, but chock-fucking-full of the creepy mechanical eyes that fly open and shift around independently in their sockets. Fortunately, I was none the wiser at the time--and totally fascinated by the concept of a doll that moved and made noises independently of me.
Unlike the real baby I'd later have, whom I'd smuggle to the farthest corner of the bonus room and practically smother with a pillow so he wouldn't wake the house with his wailing from 2-4 AM--Baby Heather wasn't life-like enough to actually wake me up in the middle of the night. But as it turns out, I was only so intrigued by her technological advance. The minimal "programming" she required quickly grew tiresome for me and I eventually just shut her down for good. I'm happy to say my neglect was not foreshadowing of my future parenting skills, but rather the harbinger of all the future TVs, DVD players, wireless speakers, and various electronics I would eventually dismiss with a shoulder-shrug if I was forced to crack the instruction manual for more than 5 minutes.
The saddest part of Baby Heather's brief tenure is how god-awful expensive she was. I cringe at the thought of how much my parents paid and how little I actually played with her. A much more sound investment of my parents' money was a hulking piece of pig-tailed machinery named Cricket. My youngest sister Caroline got her as a gift at some point in the late 80's and played with her so incescently that Cricket's voice was effectively seared onto my auditory cortex forever after.
Cricket was about the size of the average 4-year-old, with a giant head the weight and circumference of a bowling ball. Her mouth mechanically opened and closed in time with a tape-recorder lodged in her thoracic cavity. It was meant to make her look like she was talking along with the cassette, but made her appear instead like she was repeatedly gumming the air or gnawing an invisible turkey leg. She wasn't mine to play with, obviously, but I still remember tentatively inserting different objects into her mouth--a plastic spoon, my pinky finger, a pencil eraser--then watching curiously as she continued on with her story, completely unperturbed. Her shockingly large eyes blinked intermittently and darted suspiciously from side to side at random intervals, like she'd just robbed a bank and was keeping an eye out for the fuzz while trying to "act natural".
Her hair was toe-head blonde and pulled back into a pair of spunky little pigtails, with bangs that formed one continuous half-pipe of curl across her forehead. She wore a pink striped sweater that was not, in fact, a turtleneck, but somehow came up to her chin, suggesting mild strangulation might be the reason her eyeballs were practically bulging out of her face. Her sensible, mint-green skirt hit just about her unbending plastic knees, like the bottom half of a uniform from a private school whose colors were "toothpaste" or "algae bloom".
With her pink high-tops that screamed "Punky Brewster" and her monogrammed shoelaces that whispered "Blair" from Facts of Life, Cricket was an enigmatic Frankenstein of fashion sense--not unlike your typical 4-year-old in real life. She came with a set of story books, accompanied the by cassettes that triggered the chomping motion of her mouth as she shared riveting accounts of her exploits, such as "Cricket Takes A Vacation" and "Cricket Visits The Zoo". Other tape sets (sold separately, of course) came with outfits pertaining to their story, like a sporty headband and sweatsuit bearing the phrase "Am I fit or what?" Cricket was a real sucker for catch-phrases, like "Picture this!" to set up key points of her story or "I'll...be...TALKIN' to ya!" as her signature close. But her absolute favorite was "Am I ___ or what?", a kind of rhetorical tic she would populate with different adjectives. While my first choice for that blank would most likely be "creepy" and my obvious answer would be "yes"--the word Cricket chose to insert would always be somehow related to the story she was telling: "Am I tired or what?"..."Am I hungry or what?". "Am I obnoxious or--?" Yep.
But again, this was Caroline's doll--and she was entirely undeterred by Cricket's haunting demeanor, her penchant for catch phrases, or her ability to talk without pausing for the full-length of a 10-minute cassette. Besides, no one in the house could argue with any activity that completely consumed Caroline's preschool-aged attention for half-hours at a time--which is why Sleeping Beauty was shown on a continuous loop in the living room--and why Cricket's voice echoed through the house morning, noon, and night. At the end of the day, Cricket told stories--just like the old Disney records my sister Marie and I sat eagerly cross-legged in front of as they played, listening for the "chime" that told us when to turn the page in our fairy tale books.
Caroline was a full 4 years younger than me and 6 years younger than Marie, which meant the world was already ditching their vinyl for cassettes by the time Caroline was out of diapers. In fact, Cricket was the first in a long line of "next-generation" toys and gadgets ushered in at the very dawn of the Millennial era. As late as high school, Marie and I were still burning through white out trying to key 5-paragraph essays into our electric typewriter. By the time Caroline's turn came along, computers not only wrote papers, but served as the vehicle for email and Instant Messenger, making Caroline the first person, for better or worse, to use the term "lol" in face-to-face conversation with me. Had Cricket stuck around through an update or two, I imagine her "...Or what?" script would have eventually evolved to include "LOL!", "WTF!" or "FML!"--and she would most definitely be on Instagram or Snapchat, sitting stunned and stationary next to her pint of craft beer or riding shotgun on her friend's speed boat.
Though I'm pretty sure Cricket and Baby Heather both met the same fate of yard-sale oblivion, I can honestly contend that Cricket lived a much longer, fuller life than her crying, gurgling infant counter part. I will always remember Caroline, with matching pigtails, happily lugging Cricket around like a wide-eyed corpse whose rigor mortis had frozen her face in a permanent smile... Cricket had a good run, though. The whole house got their money's worth out of that one.
Caroline and I have both been adults for some time now, but with her birthday approaching, I recently looked into the availability of Cricket paraphernalia. After all, what does a female in her early thirties want more than to decorate her living space with an over-sized vintage doll that's guaranteed to scare the shit out of her and anyone she invites over?
Nostalgic as my intentions might have been, the mental picture of an artificial 4-year-old, folded in half and staring out of the tattered cardboard box, like a murder victim ordered off Amazon--was enough to curb the impulse of sending Caroline an actual Cricket. Instead, I decided my fond reflections on her old friend might just be enough, along with my best wishes for a wonderful day and the promise that "I'll...be... TALKIN' to ya!" very, very soon!
Happy Birthday, Cookie!
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