Not-so-imaginary friends

Last night, my friend Christine and I were talking after the drama group, and in an interesting twist in our conversation, we stumbled upon the topic of the "My Buddy" dolls, which of course, inevitably led to the topic of the "Kid Sister" dolls. "Topic" would be a bit of an overstatement, being that after the topic originally came up, our discussion consisted of us singing loudly the commercial jingles for both the "My Buddy" and the "Kid Sister" dolls, which, of course, had the same tune, and I was very impressed with our abilities to echo each other in tune and finish the song completely and with great flourish.

Two thoughts. Thought #1: My recollection of these dolls alone makes me old (they have not, unlike my good friends Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake and my My Little Pony dolls, made a recent comeback into the trend-setting minds of 9-year-olds. This is actually a good thing.). This thought about my age is too depressing, so I will move on quickly to thought #2. Thought #2: Who bought these dolls? My thought is that they were created for all those "only" children out there who needed a playmate, or for those children who had created imaginary friends for themselves, and their parents were desperate to save face in public by giving them an actual "friend" to talk to. Because I don't know anyone who had one of these dolls. My thought when they introduced them, long ago in my childhood, was that I did not need ANOTHER kid sister, I already had one of those, and she was trouble enough, thank you. The idea of having a kid sister that didn't talk back and listened to every exaggerated word of my stories was tempting, but only for a minute. Because, along with the fact that I did already have a younger sister that would kick and bite me, among other things, was the fact that the dolls were ginormous. I think that they were supposed to be almost "life-sized", so you could get rid of any lonely days by holding the hand of this huge stuffed being and dragging them around with you.

This, today, seems somewhat frightening to me. As does the fact that I can still sing the commercial jingles for both the "My Buddy" and "Kid Sister" dolls. Unlike my ability to sing the chorus of "The Gambler", this will not serve me well at parties. This will not be helpful for me in any way. So I would like to ask my brain, very politely, of course, to eliminate those commercials from my brain space. Because I'm sure that that space could be used much more effectively. For example, it can be used to remember the "Empire Carpet" number until the day I die...c'mon, everyone..588...

Gotcha.