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22 April 2008
The name thread got me thinking. Remember how Cabbage Patch Kids had odd names?→[More:]Well, less traditional for the 80s anyway. Do you remember the name of your kid?
Mine? Imogene Kelly. And then she was quickly renamed.
Semi-related question: I have a very vivid memory of reading stories about the lives of Cabbage Patch kids before they're adopted, and it involved being forced work in mines (salt mines, I think). Or maybe there was a danger of them being kidnapped from the cabbage patch and sold into slave labor? Was that some sort of official story, or did my 80s stranger-danger-soaked young mind totally just concoct that out of thin air?
(And I had five Cabbage Patch dolls, I think. I do not remember any of their names. Though I think maybe there was a Rebecca.)
I was never into dolls, but I received two as christmas presents from family friends who refused to recognize that I was never into dolls. The first was Dorie Nessa. The second was -- oh god, it's on the tip of my tongue. Xavier? Xander? Alexander? It's going to bug me all day.
A friend of mine had one with my exact first and middle names. That always creeped me the fuck out.
I think they had some sort of nemesis but the rest of that isn't ringing any bells. God, they were creepy looking dolls.
It was absolute chaos the morning I first got my one (and only) CPD. My mother took my sister and I to Target to pick them out and dozens (seemingly hundreds) of women were riffling through the shipments and staking up their dolls for purchase. I picked one up only to have some middle-aged woman rip it from my hands.
I drew tattoos on my cabbage patch kid. big sailor jerry style ones (althouth at the time, being six, I didn't realize that was a style in tattooing or anything. it just got some cool heart ink)
I remember getting a Cabbage Patch Kid Premie for Christmas when I was four. I knew they were supposed to come with birth certificates, or maybe you had to send away for the birth certificates. Mine didn't have one, though, and I couldn't read cursive.
This is important because there was a cursive signature on my premie's left buttock. I decided that must be her name. and since it was so long, I decided her name must be Elizabeth.
I can't remember. I can see him clear as day, and he was a preemie. I'm reasonably sure his first name started with E. But they all sound right - Edwin, Edgar, Edmond. . .but it could have been A. E___ A___?
GAH. I'll probably shout it out in my sleep and the husband will be all like "who is Edgar Albert?"
CPKs all had unique names, didn't they? If so, I can certainly see how that plus runaway popularity would equal a bunch of increasingly ridiculous names.
Mine was named Ingrid Kelda. She was hideous. I tried putting moisturizer on her face, but that just made her blotchy and hideous.
My grandmother gave me the doll: it was a bonus when she signed up for some sort of bank account. Nothing says love like a gift you don't even have to buy...,
I had boy, his given name was Lorn Matty. I had it changed (yes, I mailed in the change form) to Loren Matthew.
I also had stuffed animals, trucks, Legos, Hot Wheels and, my favourite, Lincoln Logs. And a couple knock-off Barbies. The only real Barbie I had was California (?) Barbie. She had sun tan lines.
I had lots of Barbies and kind of genderfucked with them, as I didn't have any Kens, including surgery to remove their boobs and "now you're a man!" parties (but still plenty of lesbo action). There was lots of loving in my Barbie world.
I had one CBK, Tessa Juliet, with red hair and glasses (I think? Do they have glasses? I had another redhaired Zapf doll that might have had the glasses, not sure). It's a reasonably normal name, but I remember a friend's was Pina Pippa. She called it Pipi.
Lego was my favourite toy, but reading was the most fun thing of all, ever.
I had none of the above. Breyer horses, books and about eight gajillion little green plastic army men. Oh, right, yea, I had some matchbox cars. a few stuffed animals that people gave me that I didn't care much for.
I seem to recall that many, if not most, of the matchbox cars and army men were 'reallocated' from elsewhere... likely stolen from my best friend's little brother.
didn't really matter. when it comes to legos or little green army men, there are always more, somewhere...
usually under your dad's foot when he goes to the pot at 3 AM.
ooh, trains HOW COULD I FORGET MY LIONEL TRAINS!??!! I had three entire HO sets and about ten million pieces of track and a bunch of big pieces of wood/plaster of paris crap, trees, little building models and six or eight boxes of green sawdust "grass" and a transformer that always needed fixing (my first tentative steps on the dead-end road to an electrician's career? neh, prolly not...) and about a kajillion other little accessories. it lived in a shed. MY shed, my personal clubhouse. I spent entire weeks building and tearing apart and reconfiguring and painting and gluing shit together and tearing shit apart.
trains. trains are cool. now I only shoot pics of them, of course.
I definitely didn't have a Cabbage Patch doll, as I was too old for them when they came out. My little step-sister got one though, and I remember thinking it was *absurd* to pay so much money for a doll for a six year old.
I only had one, that my boyfreind at the time dressed up to look just like him. Brown skin, dark hair, little letterman's jacket. Mom named him "Beto", short for I have no idea what. He hung around until I got married, then went off to a good home.
I had a few Barfbies, but what I really cared about were the model horses (I used to draw incessantly) and the dream house inflatable furniture. I could happily rearrange furniture all day long as a kid.
Specket, my neighbor was named Imogene, so's a lady at church. It's a popular name for ladies of a certain age.
I never had a Cabbage Patch Kid, though all my friends did.
I did have Barbies. My sister and I gave all our Barbies flower names. I had a Rose and a Violet. My sister had a Daisy, and we also a tiny Barbie-like doll named Aster. We laid out a whole apartment for them. Their dining room table was an old cookie tin wrapped in fabric, and they had stools to go around it that were half toilet paper tubes with paper circles Scotch-taped to one end. My sister and I nailed together rough beds out of odds and ends of wood and I knitted blankets and stitched pillows for them. I made a tile floor out of a lot of tiny old tiles I foudn somewhere and glued to a heavy square of cardboard. And I made lots of clothes for our dolls, some of which are still in the toy box in my parents' basement for my nieces to play with.
I never had a lot of toys. It's no exaggeration to say that most of the children I know have more toys individually than me and my four siblings combined. But I liked making things so much. Maybe if I'd had more toys I wouldn't haven't done so much of that.
I had the Breyer horses too! Misty, Stormy, Polo pony, Thoroughbred (which should NEVER be spelled without a capital as it's a specific breed) foal and Saddlebred (for which I made velvet splint boots).
I was given a Barbie once as a birthday present and I cut off her hair.
Mine was named Emeline Laura. She had red hair. It never occurred to me to try to change her name. I mean, come on, people. The name was on the birth certificate! She would have been confused if I'd changed it!
Goo - I went a little farther than you did due to the lack of boy Barbies. There was some serious inter-species lovin' going on. How else was I supposed to use the stuffed animals?
I also had a few horses but no Breyer's, they were too expensive. I used to pretend to be a horse. A pinto of course, since I was very freckled. They're still my favourite.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
