The recent MAGA executive order limiting the number of dolls for each child has prompted famous children from America’s past to reminisce on their own childhood toys.
Laura Ingalls: When we lived in the little house in the big woods, I had a rag doll. It was really just an old pair of Pa’s boxer shorts with a wad of straw sewn up inside, but if I turned it sideways I could pretend the two brown buttons were eyeballs. Once we got to the little house on the big prairie, Ma replaced it with a corn husk doll, without buttons of course. So, I borrowed Farmer Wilder’s black Sharpie and added eyes, which goody-two-shoes Mary said looked like they belonged to a fevered demon. For revenge, I stole her corn husk doll after she got scarlet fever and went blind. That’s how I ended up with two dolls. That was my best year ever except for the one later when Mary’s real baby died in a fire at the school where she worked.
Mary Ellen Walton: We were all gathered around the radio in the parlor because we didn’t have cable yet, and FDR announced that given the World War, the Great Depression, and something he called “Chinese revenge tariffs,” there would be no toys at Christmas for yet another year. Mama said I was too old for toys anyway, and that I should give my paper dolls to goody-two-shoes Erin, who had already and without prompting given hers to our youngest sister, whose name no one could ever remember. Meanwhile, I knew what no one else in our big house on the side of the small mountain did, that John-Boy had an entire collection of miniature porcelain-head Shirley Temple dolls stashed in a hidey-hole in his desk. He wasn’t writing in the evenings after saying goodnight to every goddamn person in the household—he was playing with dolls! I’d be damned if I’d give up my paper ones and he’d get to keep his harem, so I hid mine in the cowshed and told Erin to go to hell in one of Grandma’s handbaskets.
Kurt Von Trapp: I was ten going on eleven when that weird nun who wanted to have sex with my father told me I was not the “appropriate gender” to have dolls. She took all thirty of them and threw them off an alp. When they hit bottom, it caused an avalanche that swallowed an entire Nazi platoon, so she became a hero and sang a song about it at the village pub. I haven’t had a doll since.
Talky Tina: This happened in the fifth dimension. Little Kristy already had lots of dolls when her mother bought me. Her stepdaddy, who looked suspiciously like Kojak the TV detective, yelled “she doesn’t need another doll” when he found out about me. He was right about that. There’s only ONE doll when I’m around, and that’s me, Talky Tina. I drowned Kristy’s other ones in the rain barrel out back and then let the wild dingoes rip them to shreds. Then I threw Kojak down the stairs, and he died. I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way, and if I ever see a doll under the Christmas tree, I’ll burn the whole damned town down.