Our Tales of the Scrimshaw Doll stories feature an ancient, cursed Scrimshaw doll. Although a doll, Rosa is definitely not a ‘toy.’ She’s not the kind of doll you would want your little girl to play with. Not only is she fragile and worth a small fortune, she’s, well…cursed.
Toys have changed a great deal over the years. Nowadays, most toys are of an electronic nature. When I was a little girl, I loved, loved, loved Barbies. My sister, Ruth, and I would play Barbies for hours at a stretch. We would act out elaborate scenarios filled with romance and mayhem, where we—well, our Barbies–were often kidnapped and eventually rescued. (Perhaps my writing roots were starting to take hold at that time. :)) We didn’t have store bought Barbie clothes, other than the one the doll came with, so we would cut out squares of material and cut two holes for the arms, cut a strip for the belt, and slip the ‘dresses’ on the Barbies and tie the belt around their tiny waists. Our dolls could never go outside in the winter time…they didn’t have sleeves. 🙂
We didn’t have Ken dolls, so our ‘guys’ were invisible. We put celebrities in the role of our love interests. We were both huge Elvis fans (and still are), so we made an pact that he was ‘off limits’ for both of us (well, both our Barbies, had we ever met him in person and had the opportunity, the sister pact was out the window). The stand-ins for our boyfriends were usually a choice between David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, Bobby Sherman, and Davey Jones. All of that probably sounds pretty lame by today’s standards of elaborate, expensive toys, but we had tons and tons of fun. We were blissfully ignorant of what we were missing out on.
I had a particular Barbie that was my favorite. She was a Malibu Barbie with straight, silky, silvery blond hair, sky blue eyes, and a perfect tan. I adored her! When I was about twelve, I was trying to decide if I was too old for Barbies. I thought I was, but didn’t really want to give them up. I lived in Moore, Oklahoma, and a tornado hit our town. I was attending Plaza Towers Grade School (the same grade school that was destroyed by the tornado in May of this year, where those poor little kids lost their lives). The school was taking up collections for tornado victims, so I donated all of my Barbies, including Malibu, to the victims. It came at a time when I was ‘growing up’ anyway, so it just worked out. But, it took me a little while to be okay with the fact that my Barbie playing days were over.
Just a few days ago, I was discussing childhood toys with my best friend of plus forty years, Paige. She said that she still has a Miss Beasley doll from the show, Family Affair. How cool is that? I don’t have any of my toys from childhood…but I wish I did. They wouldn’t be as valuable as Rosa, but they would be special keepsakes.
What were your favorite toys as a child? Do you still have any of them?
Check out my Tales of the Scrimshaw Doll story, Thicker than Water, featuring Rosa, the ‘not for children’ doll. Also, be sure to check out the other stories in the series.
NOTE: This story will have a price change within a few days, and will be only 99¢. Be sure to wait for that to happen before purchasing!
Sometimes, secrets refuse to stay buried…
A ten-year-old accidental killing and an ancient cursed doll are only part of Julia Bennett’s problems. When she returns to her hometown of Covington, Oklahoma for an old friend’s funeral, she’s thrust into the middle of a murder case–and discovers she never stopped loving her high school sweetheart.
Jake Devlin is now the sheriff of Covington and faced with solving a murder. He isn’t surprised to find Julia in the middle of things. She still seems like the troublemaker whose reckless mistake caused a man’s death years ago–and who broke his heart when she left him without so much as a goodbye.
Jake makes it clear he’s over her, and Julia can’t wait to leave Covington behind. But when another friend dies, she knows she must stay. Can they put the past behind them and stop a killer before he claims another victim?
talesofthescrimshawdoll.wordpress.com 
Haha! I loved Barbies as a girl too, Alicia. I don’t have any of them today, but my sister and I always had horses for our dolls to ride and we still have a few of those as well as many newer ones we’ve added to our collections over the years. My sister still has her original Breyer horse, a buckskin named Hobo, we each got one of one year for Christmas. Mine was stolen just after my 8th grade year of school by a classmate ‘friend’ who was helping us pack for a move. I have found a replacement of that one though so I’m okay with that. Mine was a red roan that I immediately painted black with a star–I was a big Black Beauty fan. 🙂
Wow, that’s awesome. 🙂 Sucks that your friend stole from you.
My sister stole from me!! All the pretty, prissy, innocence Barbie was! (well….I got some of that & not the pretty) Yes…we used all those hotties as our invisible ‘men’, but she isn’t telling the whole story here.She was EVIL minded at that young, tender age! She would scare me with Barbie…paper dolls…anything she could think of! No wonder I now carry in my purse & sleep with a gun by my bedside!!! Actually….y’all who don’t know her don’t know what a TRULY great writer she is! She writes all this evilness, but she is by far the most loving, generous, thoughtful, & kind person I know. And yes…I’m partial…but I know my whole family & tons of people in her life would say the same thing! 🙂
🙂 Ruth, you definitely got the ‘pretty.’ And yes, I was a bit evil minded but it worked out fine in the end. Muwahhhaaahhhaaa. Aw, you’re sweet to say those things, but you are my sister. So… Love you!
My favorite and I still have her on the top shelf of my closet is Patsy, a stuffed dog!
As a child, I set up a stage and issued invitations to my parents to attend the performances. (My Barbie and Ken dolls had to work for a living!) I’d write out scripts which always ended with a HEA and gave the attendees party favors that I had made. I’m sure my Mother and Dad rolled their eyes, but they always pretended to like my mini presents and clapped at the end.
I’m looking forward to reading your book! It’s right up my alley! Thanks for sharing:)
How funny! You had very kind, patient parents. 🙂 Hope you enjoy the book!
I had lots of Barbies as a child and still have them. One thing I did was to collect Barbie clothes. They were made by a lady living in our town and she made the most elaborate dresses and I would have to save my allowance to even get them. The last doll I ever got was when I was 12 and she was a collectable Mattel Cinderella doll or something. I still have those too in a toy box waiting to be pulled out when we return home from Europe. I had a house, a car and anything Barbie that I could get on a birthday or Christmas.
Growing up though, my brother got all the fun toys. Like motorcycles. I was a girl and I had to get the more sedate thing even though most of the time I’d rather play with planes and dump trucks. Go figure. LOL!
Great post.
Very cool! I guess most young girls were into Barbies. I see girls with them now, but they don’t seem to really play like we did back in the day. 🙂 LOL. Darn brother getting all the cool toys! Thanks…glad you enjoyed the post.
I wasn’t really into Barbies. I had some, but I preferred my Cabbage Patch Kids, and my My Little Pony toys. I had one clown doll though, and I always thought it was cursed.
My youngest sister had Cabbage Patch Kids. They weren’t invented yet when I was a child. Once she had a party with about a dozen little girls and each brought their CPK. We still have a pic somewhere with all the little girls and their doll. 🙂 YES, if it was a clown doll, it was definitely cursed.
Love the Barbies! I had a sort of possessed toy. After my mom threw away my brother’s Ouji board, he made one from the flat tabletop of my Fisher Price airplane scooter, because it had everything: abc’s, yes and no, and numbers. He varnished a glue bottle for the pointer. We did a seance in the basement. The spirit we got said he was in the “broom room.” The only broom room we could think of was this tiny closet in the kitchen where mom kept the cleaning stuff and my dad kept his shotgun. We went up there to check it out and then chickened out. We told my mom and she freaked. She ordered dad to take the gun out because she was afraid my brother would dare us to go back in the broom closet. When my dad took out the shotgun he realized he had left it loaded…
–Kara
Ewww, cool story. Creepy. When I was 11 we moved to Missouri into this great big, old house. We were cleaning out the attic and my dad found a Ouji board. He was about to toss it into the fire we had going to get rid of things, and his friend warned him that if he did, something bad would happen. My dad was very pragmatic and didn’t believe in any kind of hooey, so he tossed it in. Three months later, our house burned to the ground. So….
Holy moly, Alicia! I always thought the best way to get rid of a Ouji was to burn it, but now? 0.0
–Kara
Right…I think the best way to get rid of it is to NOT get rid of it. 🙂
I remember that SO well! I was…8 yrs old…I think?? I tell everybody the story about daddy burning that thing! I know this isn’t the format or this, but Alicia IS my sister! 🙂 Anyway.I always believed that was what caused the actual fire.I recently became a Christian & figured out it was probably the house being 75 yrs old & having old, electrical wiring…that was the findings by the fire dept anyway! Sorry to rain on y’all’s ‘possesed’ theories! Love you, sister!
Well, as a Christian you must believe in bad spirits, right? Lots of houses are 75 years old and don’t burn down. Just sayin…. 😉
I LOVE this post, Alicia. Reminiscing is my favorite thing to do–I do it through writing all the time 🙂 And I still love toys. Barbies were my favorite. I had blowup furniture, and beautiful dresses and parasols handmade by my grandmother. She had a hard time fitting my Dolly Parton doll, though (I still have her, btw). I had Tiffany and Tuesday Taylor dolls that really got tans out in the sun. There were little tattoos to stick on their skin, so you could see how dark they’d gotten. I also had Luke and Leia from Star Wars. My grandma bummed me out about Leia, though, because she wouldn’t let me take her hair out of the donut-hairstyle she came with. She and Luke are in my closet–and her hair is still in do-nuts! I also had the Bionic Woman, who made a bionic sound when you turned her head and had computer chips imbedded in her skin. I also played heavily with my Wizard of Oz dolls, who now call my curio cabinet their home. I have all of them except the Wizard–apparently you had to buy the whole playset to get him and the munchkins, lol.
Aww, that’s awesome, Anna. I love that you have so many of your childhood toys. When I was 11 (see Missouri story above), our house burned down and we lost all of our toys (and tons of Elvis records :() I acquired toys after that, but didn’t keep any of them. I LOVE Wizard of Oz, very cool that you have those dolls. Did you know the movie is coming to the Warren Imax theater Sept 20 through 26? Glad you enjoyed the post!
Fun post, Alicia. I didn’t have A Barbie when I was a kid. I played paper dolls and cut their clothes out of magazines . My favorite ‘toy’ was a real to real tape recorder. I had a blast creating commercials and doing question & answer programs.
Kara! Creepy!!
I know that should be reel to reel!
Hi Jess, yes, we played with paper dolls too. So, you were a child producer, huh? LOL. Thanks for stopping by!
I had barbies, several different ones. When the talking barbies came out I had her. She wore a braid on the side of her head, she was also missing one leg. Did that stop her from being included with others? Most definitely not! I had Ken dolls, Cassie, Madge, Skipper. My grandmother made my barbies clothes. She bought all the accessories too. Shoes, belts, earrings, purses. You name it, by barbies were very chic. (the clothes were crochets with metallic thread interwoven. When she bought a new sewing machine, she gave me her old one. I collected dolls. Alas, when I discovered boys in 9th grade (age 14), I forgot about my dolls in a shed outside our back yard. I had a Thumbalina, a Hawaiian doll (my grandmother gave me when I was born.) I try not to think about how I forgot them. It makes me really sad. I had Velvet (My sister had Chrissy) those were the dolls whose hair grew. I also collected paper dolls. Lord, I could go on and on. Oh wait… I have. I’d better stop.
I love hearing about everyone’s memories of childhood toys. Why am I not surprised your dolls were ‘chic’? 🙂 It makes me sad when I think about the toys I had as a child too, that I didn’t keep them.
I loved Barbies! Still do. I think all these ‘high tech’ toys do more harm than good. I like that Kindle now lets you limit the time kids spend on games, while still letting them have the device to read.
My grandmother made clothes for my Barbies, plus there was usually an outfit or two at Christmas and birthdays. I also had older cousins who passed dolls and clothes down to me.
My Barbie had a horse. I could spend hours playing by myself or with a friend. I built up quite an imagination during those wonderful hours.
I scrounged shoes boxes to build houses–I had to turn the boxes on their ends so my Barbies could stand up. My friends Karalyn, Susan and I would use crayons to draw windows, doors and flower gardens.
I always thought it was funny that my oldest daughter, the ‘girlie’ one, never got into dolls of any sort while my ‘tom boy’ did.
Our generation was far more blessed than we knew. We rode for hours on our one speed bikes, talked face-to-face with our friends and had no need for ‘reality’ TV. because we actually had lives.
Nicely put!!!
Yes, very nicely put. Ha, Tamrie, I’d forgotten about making houses out of shoe boxes, but we did that too. And, yes, we stood them on end so Barbie could stand inside. Cramped quarters, but I think she liked her cozy home. 🙂
Reblogged this on Kathy L Wheeler – Author and commented:
Excellent post!
Thank you so much, Kathy! That link didn’t work for me, though.
Thank you, Frank Danner.
Ha, no kidding.
My mom tried to get me to like Barbies, but I usually just pulled their arms off. I do still have the few I received for Christmas along with the clothes – even have the matching shoes. But, I guess that would be expected since I never played with them. I also tortured my younger sister and never let her play with them either. Ha! My favorite thing were my books and music. I would sit in my yellow beanbag from noon on Saturday to just before I was supposed to get up and get ready for church on Sunday morning reading. Seriously, who could sleep when hobbits were finding golden rings and escaping creepy barrow-wights or a really hunky ranger was running around Middle Earth with a really cute elf? Thanks, Alicia for a great trip down memory lane! I was definitely the kind of girl to love a cursed doll!
Heidi! Even as twisted as I am, I draw the line at mutilating Barbies. 🙂 I also loved to read too, surprise, surprise. 🙂 You’re welcome. Glad you enjoyed the trip!
Pingback: I’m a Barbie Girl: 10 Super Nostalgic Toys From the 90s | womenstruate