by Lorie Fuller
When I discovered Ariel on the couch in numerous pieces, I wasn't completely shocked. In fact, I was pretty calm about it. My youngest daughter (age 3) had brought me the doll earlier in the day with just one leg broken off the torso. I went into the kitchen to make lunch and should have known something was up as there was silence in the living room for at least a half-hour. Later, I found poor Ariel dismembered and decapitated.
I asked my girl why she pulled Ariel apart. She told me she didn't want to talk about it. I explained to her that we had to throw the doll away now, as there was no way to fix it. She quickly grabbed the body parts from my hand and said, "No!" Then she tried to stuff Ariel's head on the foot of the leg like a popsicle. This reminded me that I had "given in" and allowed the girls to watch "The Nightmare Before Christmas" even though I thought that Tim Burton was a little advanced for my previously-princess-possessed little girls. Had I corrupted both of them?
As a child, I remember, errr, mishandling my dolls occasionally, too. I remember a few spankings due to dolly misbehavior (my mother will tell you I beat them with chains--not true). I also remember being so jealous of my sister's bride doll (I was given the ugly stepsister/bridesmaid doll!) that I attempted to behead her with her metal doll stand. There was the one who had her hair dyed in orange juice, though no one knows which one of us kids really did that. A few dolls were given permanent makeup that didn't exactly improve appearance. There were one or two headless beauties, a "sister" doll that no one played with, thinking she was too plain, and I honestly have no idea what happened to the Ken doll - really, I don't.
No mom really wants to admit that her daughters roughed-up their dollies, but you know what I figured out when I grew up? Many of us did it. Perhaps this made me a little too calm when I found Ariel spread out over the couch in pieces. Maybe I should have been more disturbed that my perfectly beautiful little girl would quietly and deliberately break a doll apart and not seem to care later on. Just maybe I thought someone might question my parenting behavior. So, of course, I went straight to Facebook and posted the photo to see what would happen. I'm a risk-taker, you see.
Let's get real for just a minute, shall we? If the perp in this case had been a little boy, wouldn't we be inclined to say, "boys will be boys" and forget about it? If it had been a monster truck instead of a doll, wouldn't we celebrate his skill and industriousness? And, if I were one of those perfectly coiffed and manicured mommies (I'm not), wouldn't we just blame the kid's friends?
Now, I'm no expert here, but I'm pretty sure my daughter took the dolly apart because she was curious. I think she didn't take a second glance at it because I didn't panic and immediately type early personality traits of serial killers into Google. I also don't think she's a future surgeon, but that's another article.
What I think is that events like this one are defined by the people who observe them. I choose to observe these things with humor, and I was glad to see on Facebook that most of the responses were similar. You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief when we all admit our children aren't always angels.
Let's do more of that, shall we?
Lor
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