SR- My Catalyst: The 80s Shirt

Even when I was a little girl, I knew my life wouldn’t be normal. I used to dream of being adopted, and turning out to be a princess from a far away land. Of course, I think all little girls believe that at some point in their lives.
Little did I know that my life wouldn’t just be NORMAL, it wouldn’t even be SANE.  Fate had it out for me.

When did I notice this? I think the day I stole one of my own birthday presents and ran out into the backyard to open it. I was turning four years old, and my party seemed oh so far away. So, when I found my presents, all wrapped up nice and hiding in a closet, I went for it.
Grabbing a rectangular one, I dashed out into the backyard, and hid behind a tall tree we had out there. It had smooth, white bark, and the leaves looked like bright green stars. [I was calling them ‘Tree Stars’ long before “Land Before Time” ever hit the silver screen] I was always very attached to that tree, so I remember it well.
Anyway, full of childish anticipation, [the kind where you might wet yourself at any given moment] I tore the wrapping off to reveal:

The most hideous shirt I’ve ever seen in my life.

Honestly, this thing was ugly. It WAS the 80’s after all, and it had all sorts of orange and lime green squiggles all over it. The era personified.
Most people would read this and go: “Well, serves her right for being disobedient!”. Note that I could have opened ALL the presents, but I didn’t. I picked one, an excellent compromise between being ‘bad’ and being ‘excited’.
I put the shirt on, and told my Mom and Grandma what I had done, stressing my thinking behind it. They just laughed and gave me another present to open. This time it was a big jug of bubbles, which was way better. So I went out on the back patio, wearing that shirt, and blew bubbles until my party started.
And this was the formula for the rest of my life. Looking back, the shirt didn’t seem so bad, but to four year-old me, it was devastating. But there were people there to fix it.
Shortly after that, my baby brother was born.

August Jr., or ‘A.J.’ for short, wasn’t even expected. [Not to me anyway. Obviously, my mother was expecting him.] On the day he was brought home, I was given a doll. It was one of those dolls that was sculpted in soft plastic to look like a real sleeping baby, and had a soft body in which a plastic contraption was hidden. The purpose of this heart-shaped device was to produce a beat that you felt through its ‘chest’. It came clad in a white and pink striped fuzzy suit, so it was obviously a girl baby.
I promptly named it ‘Sister A.J.’ After all, A.J. was a baby, but he was a boy. This could be ‘Sister A.J.’. That made it a girl’s name in my head, so it was all ok.
I took that doll EVERYWHERE. I took it to the grocery store and dropped it, causing passing people to panic. This doll looks so real, it’s creepy. My fiancée won’t even look at it, it’s so realistic. He says it looks dead. Now that I’m older, I tend to agree, but there are so many memories associated with that doll, I can’t possibly look at it with any kind of malice or disgust. It was given to me by three generations of my maternal family, and I would never want anything to happen to it.
I still have it, packed away, safe. I don’t know if I’ll pass it on to my children yet. I might decide to be buried with the thing, clad in an old baby onesie and a diaper, Its face caked with the remnants of my cousins’ abuse of it when I went to live with them two years later. Eye shadow, marker, ballpoint pen ink, its heart cavity ripped almost hollow. She’s even missing a finger, due to a family pet we had a while back. I would have given my life for that doll. It was IMPORTANT.
That poor, poor doll. I feel like it, looking back on those eight years of my life. I don’t know how the poor, naïve girl who used to pray to God to make Sister A.J. a real baby, and to bring her Handi-Snacks made it out alive. I really don’t.

I think I might have done it by going crazy. A long term temporary insanity. I have honestly blocked quite a bit of what comes next, but in writing this, I will remain as true to my memories as humanly possible. That’s all I can promise.