A Tale of Two Barbies

Well, since Barbies came out in March of 1959 I am old enough that I did not have Barbies as a little girl. I am a Boomer, okay? My parents were married in 1945 and I was born in 1946, so what that means is that Barbies were not a thing until 1960 or so, at which time I was already in junior high (it was called junior high back then, not "middle school"). I had other dolls growing up. I had a red-headed walking doll named Barbara, and a (teenage) Poor Pitiful Pearl doll and a beautiful ballerina doll with jointed knees and a beautiful blonde girl named Mary Ann. I think I named my ballerina doll Anna. I may tell you the story about how I was unable to get my ballerina doll from my mother's house, but for this story, what happened was when I couldn't have mine, and not knowing if I ever would, I found one very much like her on e-bay and named her Anna. So when I finally got my Anna back, I had to give her back her name and name the one I got from e-bay something else, so I named her Estelle. So I have two ballerina dolls now. What's really interesting to me about these two dolls is that Estelle had blue eyes and blonde hair while Anna had brown hair and brown eyes, but their faces and their tutus were alike. There is more I could tell you about these dolls. Well, I'll tell you this: Just in case this ever happens to you, Anna's eyes were cloudy and I found out you could clear cloudy doll eyes with a hair dryer blown on them with a funnel made with cardboard. So if you ever have an old doll with cloudy eyes, know that you can absolutely restore them this way. It is some kind of mold that happens sometimes to old dolls, and it happened to my poor Anna when she was in my mother's basement for years. Both of these dolls' hair is in great condition, which is kind of amazing to me, because dolls that get played with a lot often get their hair terribly messed up. There are other things about these two dolls I may tell you another day, but this brings me to the topic of the two Barbies. So, since I didn't have Barbies growing up, I never missed them. But as they have been such a staple in the lives of little girls (mostly little girls) down through the years, and they have evolved so much, there came a time a few years ago when I noticed how much they had changed, and in all my thrift shopping I would see discarded Barbies in boxes, mostly unclothed Barbies with terribly messed up hair, until one day I saw one that caught my eye. I don't even remember now where I was living (I've lived in 10 states). It may have even been in the 17 years since I moved back to my hometown, but I think I found her at a Goodwill, and she was just so beautiful. She was a blue-eyed blonde with little round red earrings and a very snazzy little two piece dressy outfit with pink high heels and a purse. Somehow, she ended up with two outfits, and I don't remember if I got the other one with her or somewhere else, some other time, but long story short, she has two outfits and a bulky sweater. Okay, so I do not collect Barbies, all right? I also have 14 Breyer horses, but I don't "collect" Breyer horses either. I RESCUE Breyer horses. I have only bought like three of them new. All the rest I got in thrift stores or antique stores for a reasonable price. So there's that, and that's also another story. Okay, so that is Barbie the first. I haven't even named that Barbie. She's just Barbie, I guess, and she currently keeps company with one of my Breyer horses on top of my piano, where she has been for several years now. So, today I went to a thrift store with a friend, and guess what I found, the most beautiful Barbie I have ever seen, and she wasn't unclothed! She had on a bathing suit, as in a built-in bathing suit, which I thought was genius. I saw a lot of other, mostly unclothed, Barbies in various conditions, written on with black permanent marker and things like that, but this doll was absolutely beautiful. She had long, slightly waved, medium golden blonde hair and blue eyes and only cost $3, and I simply could not resist her, so now I have two Barbies. And that’s my rather dull “tale of two Barbies.” Barbie the second will have to have a name, I suppose. I'm thinking Melanie or something like that, yes, maybe Melanie, and another amazing thing about this doll is she has flat feet, so I was able to position her standing in front of my Breyer model of Rags to Riches, the filly who won the Belmont Stakes in 2007. By the way, Rags to Riches is still alive and was retired in 2008 after reinjuring her pastern. Just so you know, a filly had not won the Belmont since 1905, so that was a very big deal in horseracing history. Only three fillies have won the Belmont, and that is another story also. By the way, Rags to Riches was retired to Coolmore America's Ashford Stud for breeding, and as of May 29, 2025, was in foal to Golden Pal. (I just looked that up). I like to think up names for racehorses, and there are rules to naming racehorses. The names can't have more than 18 characters, for one thing. I have always dreamed of adopting an Off the Track Thoroughbred, aka OTTB, so I like to think about what I would name one if I could ever have one. Of course, the horse would probably already have a name, but I might want to rename it. The racehorse name that popped into my head today that has only 18 characters is the following: Writeyourselfanote. You probably think that's weird, but, you know, that's okay. I love my Breyer horses and my twin ballerina dolls and now my two Barbies I never dreamed I would ever desire to own or actually have, but here's the deal. I love beauty and beautiful things, and my two Barbies are both beautiful, as are all my Breyer horses and my twin ballerina dolls and the other beautiful dolls I have assembled through the years. There aren't that many, okay? There are only a few. So, I have just explored writing about ballerina dolls, model horses, real horses and Off the Track Thoroughbreds, thrift shopping and, finally, my tale of two Barbies, which isn't that much of a tale, I admit, and in a very roundabout way, I am sure you would agree, but I am going to leave you with that so I can get an early night tonight. I hope to actually be in bed before midnight, and that will probably be quite a stretch.