I believe I may have mentioned already that I am helping mother clear out the house that she and Big Daddy have been living in for over fifty years. Yes, it is quite a job, but every day, we find new treasures, and I am enjoying the process in between bouts of tearing my hair out and taking tranquilizers.
When we got to my old bedroom and opened the closet, mom explained that she had saved my doll collection, and that I should be the one who decided what to do about it. They were all in shoe boxes, so I put them in a bag in the car, and waited until I got home to open them up and get a trip down memory lane. I just used to love those dolls.
OK, so the first one I opened was this:
I just want to say something before we go further into this post. First of all I have no memory of this doll. I know that doesn’t sound good. He was probably buried in the doll box and I only played with like, the Scarlett O’Hara doll. There is really nothing else I can say, without making it worse. Except…
Then I had this idea. Earlier on the same day, mother had pulled out her collection of old political badges. I mean, at least they are Democrats, right? So I did try to make it better:
After that, I decided to call Junior and Miss Pearl into the parlour to help me out, because before I knew what was happening, I had a major political incident on my hands. One by one, we pulled out the dolls and I applied the appropriate badges. Before long, we had a whole feminist liberationist Central America/Cesar Chavez thing going on:
Then it all got a bit silly. Junior offered to donate his Andy Warhol doll (after all, I am my mother’s daughter) to the tableau:
He then decided that these two looked kind of like a couple:
So there you go. Now I have what is perhaps the most politically incorrect mantlepiece on the planet. Or maybe the most politically correct? Who knows? At least I feel as though, in some strange way, I have empowered my dolls.
Southern Dysfunction 
