2682. A special doll

Well, yes. People say that my little girl is a bit “different” but I don’t really like to admit to it. She’s all of seven and I like to think of her as just a normal little girl.

I’m managing okay – I think. Her mother died when she was five. Rather tragically in a car accident. For her seventh birthday I gave my daughter a doll. What the hell does a guy like me know about buying a doll? Anyway I got one but apparently it didn’t come with all the right clothes. She liked the doll nonetheless. But I got some of my late wife’s old dresses and took it to a dressmaker with the doll’s dimensions and asked her if she could make a couple of sets of doll’s clothes.

That was a couple of weeks ago, and the doll’s clothes arrived. They are perfect. In fact I nearly cried when I saw them on the doll. The little doll so looked like my late wife – especially with the fabric of her clothes now on the doll.

Just yesterday I heard my daughter playing with her doll in her room. She was talking to it. It caught me off guard because I could hear my late wife’s voice answering back. So I peeped in through the open door and my daughter was talking to the doll. It was quite sweet.

And then the doll answered back. It was my wife’s voice.

2574. A fortuitous day

Lucy was at the end of her tether. She had three children’s mouths to feed; three children to clothe, three children to get to school. She had lost her job during the pandemic and never got it back.

Knitting wasn’t really Lucy’s thing but she pulled a pullover apart that was now too small for any of the children, wound the wool, and began to knit. In the end she had knitted three scarves and three sets of mittens. That should help the tiniest bit in winter. There was a little bit of wool left over. Little Eden had always wanted a doll. Lucy knitted a little doll’s costume around a small plastic bottle. Eden called her doll “Olivia”.

But now winter was setting in and not a dime was left in the kitty. Eden said, “If you want to, you can sell Olivia online.”

Would you believe! It went for twenty-four dollars within 10 minutes, along with the promise that Olivia’s little sister, Avery, would always answer Olivia’s letters if she wrote. It wasn’t an email or a text; it was a real letter with a stamp that would arrive in the mailbox. That was a lot more exciting! To cut a long story short, it took a lot of work but Lucy soon had thousands of people wanting dolls whose little sisters would answer letters. Lucy had five people working full time.

A famous online market wanted to take over Lucy’s enterprise and Lucy told them to jump into the lake. The same online market tried to do the same as Lucy and failed. After three years, Lucy’s dolls became unfashionable. They were put on forgotten shelves along with every Cabbage Patch doll in the world.

But it didn’t matter. Eden is now a qualified Marine Biologist and the other two children have equally successful careers. Lucy’s grandchildren often come to stay with their grandmother in her mansion.

2387. Let this be a lesson

Cindy had an old-fashioned doll. Its eyelids would close when it was laid down to sleep. Its eyelids would open when it sat up.

Cindy was at school, and before going had given specific instructions to her mother. The mother was to look after the doll while Cindy was away. Cindy’s mother took the doll and placed it on the kitchen table while she began to make a cake. “Stay there and behave,” said Cindy’s mother. She then left the house to shop for several missing ingredients.

Those of you who have had a doll will know just how demanding they can be. They do not like being left alone. No sooner had Cindy’s mother left the house then the doll got up off the table and threw all sorts of unsuitable ingredients into the cake mixture. She was a naughty, selfish  doll.

When Cindy’s mother came home she noticed instantly that the cake mixture had been tampered with. Cindy’s mother was not born yesterday. She grabbed the doll and threw it into the pre-heated oven at 200 degrees Celsius.

Let this be a lesson to all of you.