The Story Behind This Picture

You see a part of this image when I comment on your blog. I thought I'd tell you the story behind it.

You see, I grew up with FOUR brothers. Two older and two younger. When this photo was taken, my parents and five of us kids lived in a small, three bedroom house that was less than 800 square feet. Money was tight, so what was earned went towards food and clothing and not much else. Besides, the stores on Molokai don't sell much of anything but the basics.

Having four brothers made me tough. I was a tomboy through and through. My mother always set my long hair in curlers I think, to give me a feminine look. But, I could climb anything and climb it higher than anyone else because I was a pip squeak. And, boy oh boy, I could out run them all! My classmate, Bruce Fujimoto taught me how to run without being caught.

One Christmas, my Uncle, Matt Paz (he was my dad's high school classmate and buddy), who sold State Farm Insurance on Oahu, sent us Christmas gifts. We had a Charlie Brown Christmas tree with just a sprinkling of gifts under it, but we got excited over just about anything! HE sent me this doll. A girlie girl's doll! Daddy had to take a picture of me with the doll, so after all the gifts were opened (didn't take long-there weren't that many), he sat me in the kitchen and took this photo to record his daughter with a girlie girl's doll! She was a frilly doll with I think a wedding dress or something on her. Kind of big. Kind of stiff. Not something I could relate to, really. For the record, I never liked Barbie dolls either. That's not something we tomboys like!

Did I play with this doll? Not really. One summer, a few years later, when we had moved into the house that became our family house (big ranch style home with lots of property), my brothers and I were marauding, as we usually did. Bored. Looking for entrainment. Somehow or other, this doll became our muse. Her clothing had disappeared. She became dismembered. Her arms and legs ended up in our 50 gallon drum trash 'incinerator" (we burned our trash there and kept a screen over the top of the can to keep paper goods with flames from floating out of the top). We were all in hysterics, and for some reason found this to be extremely funny. Mind you, we probably had ridiculous dialogue going on with the activity. Imagine four boys that are 11, 10, 7 and 5 years old and one 9 year old girl. We were plumb silly. And, after the burning thing, we took the remaining torso, stuck it on a stick on a dirt hill and bombarded it with rocks. Laughing to no end all the while-like, laughing so hard you almost wet your pants kind of laughing. Even though, to this day, I don't know why it was so darned funny. I think we were just in a slap happy silly mode.

My poor mother. I think she witnessed this but did not let on that she did. Years later we talked about it-me as an adult. She told me that she was horrified at what we were doing, but didn't interceded as she didn't want to make the incident be larger than it was. I don't know how she knew to do that. I don't think I would've reacted that way if I were the mom. But, mom was right. She knew were were not violent kids. For us, it became one of those bizarre memories that we will recollect and retell because it was such a random thing to do!

That poor doll. I'm glad Uncle Matt never knew about the demise of that pretty doll.

So, now you know the story that goes with this image!