Hole in My Head

When I was young, my great grandmother had what I thought was a nice doll. It was about three feet tall with "real" hair (well, you could comb the hair) and it would stand in the corner of Grandma T's living room.

In time, it ended up at our house. I was a little older and not really into dolls anymore, and it ended up in Suzy's room.

There was only one problem: the way the doll was made (so that the arms and legs could move) involved long strands of elastic inside, and eventually the elastic dried out and started to break.

My mother hates clutter and so of course, my father is the exact opposite. I'm sure at least once she wanted to throw the doll away, and he wouldn't hear of it. So, being decidedlyUN-sentimental, one day she simply cut the remaining elastic, which made the arms, legs, and head separate from the torso. She put it all in a big green garbage bag with the intent of fixing it someday, tied the bag shut, and shoved it in Suzy's closet.

What we didn't know was that this COMPLETELY freaked out Suzy. (A 6 or 7 year old child watches their mother dismember a doll that's approximately the same size as said child, and put the pieces in a bag-- can you blame her?)

She was SURE that doll was coming out of the closet to get her. Positive. She had a little set of white bookshelves and every night she would draaaaaag them over to barricade the door. In the morning she would draaaaag the shelves back over to where they belonged. None of us knew.

When she told me this story the other night I laughed and laughed because we had a black cat, which roamed through our house at night, and more than once the cat got a running start and jumped on Suzy's bed during the night, scaring the crap out of her.

Isn't it funny how you can totally mess with your kids, without even knowing it?



(Hole In My Head, by the Dixie Chicks - It must have knocked me crazy, It must have hit me hard, People must think I'm lazy, Like my shuffle's short Of a playing card)