Whoever the clueless bastard was who thought up the Cabbage Patch Kid better hope I never see him face-to-face. The invention of this bizarrely appealing doll that came with a birth certificate covered in cabbages and whose muscles had completely atrophied pretty much marked the end of me fitting in with anyone but my cleaning lady. The invention of this doll, combined with my early obsession with masturbating and the ridiculous secondhand clothes I was forced to wear, prevented anyone in the third grade from wanting to be alone with me.
My parents couldn't have been more unreasonable when it came to fads or clothes that weren't purchased at a pharmacy. The first hurdle I can remember having to deal with was Barbie dolls, which were a rite of passage for every kindergartner with a half carafe of dignity. I remember explaining to my mother that I needed a Barbie and I needed one fast. Not a hand-me-down from my sister Sloane, who had given all of her Barbies lesbian haircuts in honor of Jo from The Facts of Life. I told her I needed a brand-new one with a decent outfit, something appropriate for Bora-Bora or the Jersey shore. My mother reassured me she'd head right to the store after she dropped me off at school one morning. Not surprisingly, when I returned home later that day on foot, because once again my parents had forgotten they had a daughter, my mother ran down the stairs to show me my new "Barby" with a y. Unlike Barbie with her gloss finish, this "Barby" came with a matte finish, three bald spots, and a working vagina.
After the Barbie craze came the Atari craze, which my parents refused to participate in. My father explained to Sloane and me ad nauseam why video games polluted the mind, and if we really wanted to retain some knowledge, we should watch the stock-market channel and try to figure out what all the Dow Jones abbreviations on the ticker stood for. I wanted to tell my father to go fuck himself. If he knew so much about the stock market, why did we have air-conditioning only in our dining room? I didn't understand why he had no interest in seeing his daughter excel socially, or why my parents even bothered to have me when they already had five other children who had put them in the hole. It felt like every day there was another mountain to climb, and I just wanted that mountain to take form on the screen of our television set as an Atari video game called Asteroids.
I remember watching documentaries on African countries where children were starving and getting swarmed by flies. I recall thinking that at least their parents were by their side trying to protect them from the flies and trying to gather them food. My parents were busy living their own lives. If I saw a fly, they would just tell me to get out of the way or sarcastically suggest I call Youth and Family Services. What they didn't know was that I had been in contact with Youth and Family Services several times and was one phone call shy of sealing the deal on my emancipation.
Every time a new trend came along, I died a little inside. By the time third grade rolled around, kids started to get their wits about them, and it didn't take long to realize I was not cutting the mustard. I wasn't even cutting the mayonnaise. I knew that my parents would never fall for what was "hot" on the market. The word "hot" wasn't even in their stream of consciousness. The two of them were about as "hot" and "with it" as cerebral palsy. They had about as much empathy for my situation as I did for the stupid cat they brought home for me one day after I asked for a Smurf.
"You can learn a lot more from a cat than you're going to learn from some blue plastic action figure," my father informed me.
"Oh, for chrissake, Dad, they're not action figures. They're peaceful blue little people. They're from a village. And what am I going to learn from a cat? How to take a dump in a box and then walk back into a room like nothing happened?"
"Chelsea. Watch your goddamned mouth. You talk like a truck driver."
"Well, Dad, it's not like we're poor. Why can't you just buy me what I ask for so I can fit in with everyone else?"
"You are eight years old, and as long as you live in this house, you are under our supervision. Cats can be wonderful animals, and anyway, it will be an outdoor cat."
"It doesn't matter if it's an outdoor cat. It will still take a shadoobie in the backyard and walk right back in the house all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, like, 'Hey, what'd I miss?' I'll tell you what you missed, you cat, you missed wiping your ass!"
"Chelsea, go to your room until you learn how to communicate like an adult!"
Whenever my father yelled, he would also walk toward you and, more often than not, end with a slap in your face, so I was quick to sidestep the sofa and avoid him by doing a cartwheel straight into my bedroom. Then I peered out of my door for one last comment. "There's a reason you never see anyone's house with a Beware of Cat sign. Because they're not even worth mentioning." As soon as he attempted to get up from the couch, I slammed the door and hid under my bed.
I used to look at that cat with such disgust. Even dogs have the dignity to go find a private area before dropping a deuce. Only cats think they have nothing to hide and can get away with just a couple of back kicks to alert the area that's about to be unsanitized that it's got something coming its way. And then that's it. They walk right back into the room, sometimes even have the gall to hop onto the sofa and look around like, "Hey, whose turn is it to contribute?" I decided to name the cat Poopsie Woopsie. It was the nicest way to say, "I just took a poop, whoopsie."
I used to stare at the cat and imagine how many Smurfs I could fit into it. Then I thought about painting the cat blue and throwing it in the microwave like a little Shrinky Dink. It would be the Smurf no one had. I had terrible thoughts like these throughout my childhood, and luckily I never acted on most of them. It was a Tourette's of sorts; I knew that the thoughts were bad, but I couldn't stop them from entering my mind. I just wanted some fucking Smurfs. Why did the cat have to take up the same amount of space as fifty Smurfs yet bring absolutely nothing to the table? It would just sleep and sleep for hours, like it had nowhere to be and nothing to do. My sister Sloane loved the cat and would try to trap it under her covers, but Poopsie Woopsie wanted nothing to do with Sloane and craved the lack of attention I gave to it, so we ended up spending most of our time together, with the understanding that there was going to be very little affection. Sloane always accused me of turning Poopsie Woopsie against her, but the truth was, the cat could tell that my sister was "off," and by "off" I mean Mormon.
After a while I just accepted that the cat was always in my room. Poopsie Woopsie had impeccable timing; the only time it would ever scratch my door to get out of my room was right before one of my orgasms. The cat was a dick, and he or she knew it. I don't recall if it was a boy or a girl because I never bothered to ask it.
By the time the Cabbage Patch craze came around, I knew I was screwed. If I couldn't reason with my parents about why it was important for them to buy reputable snacks for my lunches, like Snickers or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, so that I didn't have to unwrap a single Rite Aid imitation Nut Cluster in front of everyone at my lunch table, I knew that this Cabbage Patch bullshit was going to be the end of me.
One day after school, I walked into our living room, turned off General Hospital, and joined my mother on the living-room sofa. She had a half-eaten liverwurst sandwich on her lap, so I quickly threw that out the sliding glass door and watched our dog, Mutley, spring out of his doghouse like a hyena.
"Listen up. We're at a crossroads, and I need your help. Everyone at school is talking about Cabbage Patch Kids, and the word is that Toys 'R' Us is getting a new shipment tomorrow morning. So what I'm going to need from you is to get in line at Toys 'R' Us first thing tomorrow morning and get me one of those dolls. You're gonna need to be there by seven," I told her, excusing myself after settling what I had on my docket.