Perpetual Smile

In my high school class, I was the token goth chick, complete with black beeswaxed hair, black lipstick, fishnet, and awesome knee high (platform) boots. Dir en grey (during their super crazy goth days) were my inspiration:

(By the way, “Hotarubi” is my all-time favorite Dir en grey song. I loved them until I met them after a concert and they completely ignored me. Douchebags.)

My favorite outfit involved straight-jacket pants — you know, the ones with tons of belts and buckles preventing you from running if, say, a crazed serial killer or rapist (or your high school science teacher) came after you. And a trenchcoat. Oh yeah, I couldn’t survive without the trenchcoat. (I still have lots of this wardrobe in storage. It’s going to be fun whenever I get to look at it all again.)

Anyway, most people were either afraid of me, talked a lot of shit about me, or were morbidly curious and talked to me on occasion. Mostly, they just couldn’t figure me out. Back then, that bugged me. Now I think it’s pretty cool. However, if they had known my biggest secret, they might not have been so scared.

At 15, I still played with Barbies.

Whoops, there goes my street cred.

My sister and I always played elaborate, daytime Emmy worthy games with our Barbies that would last weeks if we were careful. We both had great imaginations, and since there weren’t any kids in our neighborhood to play with we spent a lot of time inside together. We had a few cars, a plane, a limousine, and two campers, and TONS of dolls. There were the two hot twin Kens, my New Kids On the Block Ken, my hispanic Barbie, my African-American Barbie with the super cool short and veryvery curly hair, the hot blond Barbie who still smelled like the perfume she’d been sprayed with in the factory over ten years before, and a whole bunch more that I don’t really remember.

That was the last year that I really played with them, but I’ll always remember the good times Lauren and I had, spending the days of our childhood actually playing out the lives of the people we’d made up rather than just dressing and undressing our dolls.

Now I’m older and it’s not kosher to play with Barbies anymore, but I totally want to buy a Barbie and make my own Barbie of the Undead. Seriously. Click it. You know you want to.

What was your favorite toy as a kid? What are your best childhood memories of that toy? Share in the comments below!