The Way We Were

Meet the Sunshines. Stevie, Stephie and "Sweets". Doing things together and with you. In 1973, when I was a preschooler, this was a close as my liberated mother was going to let me get to a Barbie doll.

According to Mom, Mr. & Ms. Sunshine had conversations that went something like this:

"You were supposed to get up with baby!"
"No, you were!"
"You were supposed to feed the baby!"
"No, you were!"

Soon after, they divorced. Steve married Elyse, who already had a son born out of wedlock. She adopted Sweets and they changed her name to Mallory. You know the rest.

Later (as I shared recently in Santa, You Bastard), I was allowed to have a couple of Barbies, with limited wardrobe allowances. They did not bicker, but lacking a proper Ken doll, wound up having midget sex with Smurfs.

(I will let it go when I get the damn doll, Mom!)

The Sunshines pictured above are not my Sunshine family of origin. They are surrogate Sunshines, adopted on ebay several years ago when I first discovered it, whereupon I immediately set about trying to reassemble my entire childhood.

In addition to the Sunshines, I bought Walk With Me Suzy, and My Baby Beth, my sister's and my favorite baby dolls. Also a whole bunch of Ladybird Books, the Well-Loved Tales. I had to stop somewhere, but one item I had intended to acquire was Growing Up Skipper. Skipper, you remember, is Barbie's teenybopper niece. Nobody ever believes me, but you could crank Growing Up Skipper's arm and her breasts would expand, from little teenybopper flatties to big, hard Barbie boobs. I swear I'm not making it up. I never owned Growing Up Skipper myself, but my best friend had one, and I coveted her mightily.

I don't think G.U. Skipper made it to the Bible Belt. Nobody I have met here of my generation remembers her. They think I am pulling their leg (or hoping to crank their arm). But their eyes shine at the thought.