TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 42

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 28, 2000000006


Dear Youz Guyz,

	No matter how much sleep I get at night, 
I wake up looking like I'd tossed and turned all 
night.  My mother says, "Go back to bed.  You 
look tired."  And, I feel tired, too.  Maybe it's 
the drawn out period of stress.  I've been on a 
stress mill for months now.  People tell me that 
I'm doing excellently considering what I'm going 
through, and I demur insisting that I'm not doing 
as well internally as the outer shell looks. 
Still, I'm not crying all the time, or standing 
on top of tall buildings looking for a good place 
to land below.  I think writing up these brief 
stories from my life is holding me together. 
It's something I do every day.  Is it still of 
interest?

	Today is Shabbos and I take a rest from 
the worries and work of the week.  All those 
worries and work will be there when Shabbos is 
over, and I can pick up where I left off. 
Shabbos is an anchor of delight.  A day to play 
in.

	Play with this.




                                
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý


Playing With Dolls

	It never took much to amuse me.  I was 
not one of these kids who keeps returning to 
Mommy whining, "I'm bored!"  My mother says she 
was a bored child.  "What can I do?  What can I 
do?"  To which her aunt Belle would say, 
"Mildew."  But according to my memory and what my 
mother has told me, all she had to do was give me 
a pencil and a few pieces of paper and I was busy 
for hours.  I did like to draw, and I did invent 
stories from the things I was drawing.  I had 
imaginary playmates, too.  The earliest was Joony 
Judy who lived in the hallway outside our 
apartment in Hyattsville, Maryland.  I remember 
going out into the hallway to play with Joony 
Judy.  We got along really well, never fought, 
and went on adventures together.  My sister had 
no imaginary playmates, but my cousin, Marcie, my 
mother's brother's eldest, had an invisible 
playmate called Jingle C. Walowski.  He lived in 
the curtains.

	I didn't play with dolls in the 
traditional sense, and never played Mommy.  In 
fact, I never wanted children, didn't imagine 
myself a mother, was frankly scared to death of 
being a parent.  I was afraid I'd turn into a 
monster like my father.  Who knew what dark 
surprises lay dormant within me?  So I steered 
clear of playing house.  I did play an adoption 
agency woman, though.  Dana and a friend of hers 
were playing house and they decided they wanted a 
baby, so they went to the adoption agency.  It 
was my part to greet them and find them a 
suitable baby, show them around.  I did what I 
imagined would be the case.  I said, "This is a 
very nice one, and she's only fifty dollars." 
Dana and her friend made big fun of me for that. 
"You don't pay fifty dollars for a baby!  It's 
not done like that!  Boy are you stupid!"  and 
more than that.  What did I know?  I took my cues 
from the world around me and television.  There 
was a price on everything, including heads, I 
figured.  Actually, if I'd wanted to be accurate, 
I could have countered with initial agreement, 
"You're right.  You don't pay fifty dollars for a 
baby," but gone on to correct myself, "It's more 
like ten thousand dollars."

	Dana and I did receive dolls as presents. 
Grampa Benny ran a place called, The Bell Bazaar, 
named after the Saint Francis of Assissi Mission 
Bell in San Francisco.  It was at Sixteenth and 
Mission streets.  It had a full array of 
stationery items, plus toys, novelties, and even 
a post office in the back.  I loved that place. 
Grampa would receive samples in the mail from toy 
wholesalers who wanted his business and 
routinely, we would get two dolls, identical 
except for the colour of their hair and clothes. 
Dana would get the green plaid one, and I would 
get the red plaid one.  It has ruined red for me 
for most of my life.

	We didn't exactly play with the dolls the 
way they were intended to be used.  The packages 
said, "Realistic soft skin, eyes that open and 
close, head, arms and legs that move!"  And, yes, 
indeedy, they did.  We wound up those arms, legs 
and heads until the rubber bands holding them to 
the body snapped.  Then we had doll hospital. 
Sometimes the wigs on these dolls came off after 
rigorous pulling, and of course, the clothing 
tore after being yanked off and shoved on a 
thousand times.  The dolls got a lot of use in 
their first incarnations, and then we decided to 
make one of them into a man.  We needed a male 
doll.  We were into realism.  So we tore the rest 
of the loose wig off, coloured the head with 
paint for  hair, and then tried to fasten a penis 
to it.  We knew generally where it should go and 
roughly what the lump in a man's trousers looked 
like, but we weren't sure of the exact shape of 
the member in question.  We got a roll of scotch 
tape and built up the crotch until there was a 
sufficient lump.  But then all we had were 
dresses to put on him.  And those eyelashes were 
too coquettish anyway.  We stapled skirts 
together and cut them to make slacks.  Red plaid 
slacks, like a golfer.  Eventually, all we had of 
our dolls were basic torsos with gaping holes for 
appendages and heads, and a jumbled heap of arms, 
legs, wigs and skulls.  We were hard on toys.

	My first choice was never dolls.  My 
first choice was building materials, like the 
forerunner of leggos.  There were tiny red 
bricks, see through glass bricks, windows and 
mouldings, doors and foundations.  I would work 
these things for hours, creating partial houses, 
before I'd tear them down and start again.  I did 
not like board games.  They made me anxious with 
all the competition to win.  That feeling of 
being chased by an adversary never sat well with 
me.

	At the Bell Bazaar, Grampa would take us 
down the toy aisle and point up at the boxes. 
He'd ask us to pick out something for ourselves, 
and that's what we'd go home with.  Sometimes, 
there was nothing there that we wanted, and we'd 
have to choose a doll just to choose something 
and avoid insulting Grampa.  He wasn't easily 
insulted, though.  He loved us to distraction. 
He told us stories that he made up from his head, 
right there on the spur of the moment, about 
Silly, Tilly and Trilly, three sisters who got 
into adventures, often involving baseball, 
Grampa's passion.  We'd hound him to tell us a 
story, and he'd finally relent and weave some 
tale even better than the last.  I loved that 
more than all the toys you could give me. 
Listening to Grampa tell stories was worth a 
thousand dolls, even dolls with their heads and 
extremities in tact.

                                
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý


Coloured Water

	Virginia is right next to Maryland, and 
Luray Caverns are in Virginia.  We took a road 
trip there when I was probably about four years 
old.  Just literate.  It was a long drive for a 
kid of my age.  And from this trip, I recall 
nothing whatever of the caverns.  I only remember 
what happened outside.  It was hot and muggy, and 
I was thirsty.  There were drinking fountains and 
I headed for the one closest to me.  It had a 
sign over it:  "Colored".  I thought this sounded 
terrific.  I envisioned rainbows of water arcing 
out of the tap.   I was stepping up and pulling 
the handle for the water to come out when an old 
woman approached me, pulling me away from the 
fountain.

	"That's for coloureds," she said, 
derisively.  "You go to the white fountain."  And 
she pointed to another fountain a ways away where 
the pale skins were waiting in line for their 
turn at the pump.  Coloured, white, this all went 
completely over my head.  All I knew is I wanted 
a drink of water, and this lady was telling me I 
couldn't, when obviously I could, or that it was 
broken when obviously it worked, or that somehow 
I was doing the wrong thing, which seemed 
unlikely.  At this point, my mother came over and 
addressed the woman.  "She can drink water from 
whatever fountain she wants," she told her, and 
she watched while I took my big slurps off the 
coloured fountain.  The lady abruptly 
disappeared, perhaps to get the tar and feathers.

                                
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý
Ý

-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net