shanmonster | Porcelain Fish and Paper Dolls

When I was a little girl, I used to go to my grandmother's house. The place was filled with things I wasn't allowed to play with. She collected a lot of knickknacks and there were glass figurines, antique pipes, porcelain animals, and other bric-a-brac on countless shelves and display cases everywhere. When I wanted to play with something, I was given some Red Rose Tea figurines to play with. My favourite was the green fish.

[Fish]

I'd get pretty bored of those after a while. Sometimes I'd go out into the yard and make mud pies, topping them with deadly nightshade berries. My other indoor options were tv, National Enquirer magazines, and paper dolls. Although I was a rough and tumble, and frankly, destructive, child, I was always careful with the paper dolls. I think they may have originally belonged to my grandmother's mother. I can't remember. They were very pretty, Victorian-looking things, with girls in fussy dresses and pinched rosy cheeks. They were always kept in the top drawer in the spare room, and I could play with them any time I came to visit. I wasn't terribly interested in them, but after the thrill of the tea figurines and my grandfather's Popular Mechanics magazine wore off, the paper dolls would do in a pinch.

When I was nine years old, I moved away, and didn't get to see my grandmother again until I was twelve or thirteen years old. Mom, my sister, and I flew to New Brunswick from British Columbia to spend the summer with my grandmother. Inevitably, the boredom set in, and I remembered the paper dolls. I opened the top drawer of the bureau, but all that I saw were sheets and linens. While I gazed at them perplexed, my grandmother walked by and saw me. She began screaming, "You horrible little snoop!"

Taken aback, I tried to say I was looking for the paper dolls she'd always kept there, but her reproaches were louder, so I shut my mouth while she told my mother what a horrid child I was.

[Paper Dolls]