The first three dolls came out the year before I was born. I'm not quite sure when my mother and my grandmother became aware of them but I remember spending most of my life being brought up with the knowledge that I would get Kirsten and my little sister, Molly, would (obviously) recieve Molly. I got all the books first when I was around four years old and I made my parents read them to me over and over, according to them. But the only one I actually remember them reading to me was reading me Happy Birthday, Kirsten when we lived in Germany. We never got the catalougs, my dad was still pretty low on the Army payroll and we moved around, a lot. So Gran always had a big stack of catalougs at her house. I used to wear those things out. (Now, I wish she had kept them.) I used to walk around with the big 18 inch picture of Kirsten until I got the paper doll, which I still have.
Then, on my seventh Christmas I finally got her. It was one of the happiest days of my young life and I 'm still trying to find the photo of me clutching her. She only had one dress for a year until my next birthday when my parents got me her winter outfit. That was all they could afford at the time so every birthday and Christmas after that until the age of twelve I got everything except for the trunk from Gran.
I think it's better to have just one doll when you are little. It makes it more special. I know one little girl with a very rich uncle who buys a doll for each birthday and Christmas. He just puts out the cataloug and says, "What do you want?" I wouldn't mind having an uncle like that but the dolls mean very little to her and she doesn't have the same constant companion type of relationship that I had with my doll.
During seventh grade I entered that whole "I'm too cool to play with dolls" stage so Kirsten and all of her stuff got shoved into my very small closet. Man, I was stupid. It took five years for her to finally come out of the closet and I now fully regret all the stuff I've put her through.
Now that she is out it's funny all the people who love her. One of my sisters friends came over last night and she sat on my floor for almost an hour just staring at all of it because she'd never seen it out of the cataloug. My mother's friends came over for a St. Patrick's Day party and they spent a good long time talking about how much they loved their respective dolls. But I digress. A lot.
<font color="#051E50" size="1">[ March 19, 2006 02:28 PM: Message edited by: zap_sea ]</font>
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not just you, and not just AG dolls. When I was a little girl, (and back when it was actually acceptable to leave your kids in the toy dept while mom & dad shopped) I spent many an hour in the local dept store's doll dept, opening the boxes and gazing at the beautiful new dollies. I was not allowed to touch the dolls, but could only open the boxes (Madame Alexanders!) and look. The sweet smell and sight of those brand new, spotlessly lovely dolls in tissue was some heady stuff. To this day, I keep a lot of my dolls (non AG) in their boxes, in the tissue, just so I can relive those moments over and over. It's probably a good thing that I never got my first really nice doll, a Madame Alexander, until after I was 30!Originally posted by Janine_Nicole:
Anyone else who recieved their first doll years ago...do you remember that wonderful smell of the brand new pm dolls as you opened the box and stared? Or is that just me? [img]tongue.gif[/img]
Janine
<font color="#051E50" size="1">[ March 19, 2006 02:47 PM: Message edited by: mypinkmermaid ]</font>
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