Realistic Dolls...They're All Chucky to Me

I almost couldn't even post a picture on this blog post because I'm that terrified of realistic dolls. I most DEFINITELY could not post a picture of the worst doll of all time...Chucky from Child's Play.  Hooooo. Leeeeee. Shiiiiit. That was most definitely the start of my doll fears.

When we moved to Indiana and I was in elementary school horror movies were just becoming THE THING to do at slumber parties. I hated horror movies. But I wanted to fit in so I would enthusiastically join in with movies that would give me nightmares for months. The worst movie I ever say was Child's Play. That scared me and scarred me for life. After watching that movie, all of my realistic looking dolls had to go.

Especially Pamela.

Pamela was a talking doll much like Chucky. I got her for my birthday from my Grandma Gatlin. She was very expensive at the time, and as a child who grew up in a thrift store hippie family, was totally out of character for me to own something so extravagant. So when I became terrified of her I also had a tremendous amount of guilt. How could I get rid of a doll that I had wanted SO bad and was SO not worthy of having? I was in a pickle. At first I just tried hiding her in my closet at night time, because that's obviously when dolls come alive and kill you. But then I realized if Pamela was coming to life then she would be able to open my closet door and murder me anyway. So then Pamela had to go farther away.

Our house in Indiana had a storage attic. You couldn't walk around up there or anything, but it did have a little attic ladder that pulled down so you could climb up there and store things.

One day when I was home alone I climbed up there and stuffed Pamela in a box. I scurried down and put the ladder and hatch back up. I felt immensely better and not as guilty as I would have felt if I would have given her away.

Over the next few days I started worrying that putting her in the attic would make her really mad and therefore more murderous. I would lay in bed listening for the sounds of a doll walking around in the attic planning my murder. I was worried she would figure out how to open the attic ladder and come through the garage and THEN kill me. But the attic door was really heavy and strong. It was hard for me to pull it down and I was much bigger than Pamela.

At one point the ladder broke and we had to use a regular ladder to access the attic. I was so freaking happy. I figured if she somehow could open the heavy ass door she might be injured from the 15 foot fall onto the concrete floor of the garage and definitely not be able to come and kill me. I could mostly stop worrying about her. Mostly. Weeks and months would go by and I wouldn't think about her. But every once in a while I'd panic and think "What if she's REALLY PISSED NOW? She's been up there for years stewing in her anger. She is totally going to develop superhuman rage and find a way to come murder me."

Years ago I finally got the courage to get rid of her. Donated her to Goodwill so she can terrorize someone else. When I still lived in Indiana I would occasionally worry that she would find me and kill me. Now that I live in California I know I'm too far away and she'd never find me. Obviously.

But realistic dolls still scare me. There are none in my house. They few collectible ones I have are packed away in a special box in my garage labeled "Dolls" and if I never look at them then they won't know I put them there and they won't develop murderous plots to kill me. Obviously.

Words Have Meaning

When I was 11, my "cousin"/close friend's dad was killed in one of the high profile postal shootings that gained media attention and led to the coining of the phrase "going postal."

Her aunt was her mother's sister and my dad's brother's wife. So we weren't actual cousins, but we shared an aunt and uncle and our families grew up in the same neighborhood and were long time friends so cousins worked for us. We were also the same age and enjoyed each others company which made for good friends and a lifelong connection.

When her dad was murdered I remember my parents telling me what happened and that she would need extra love and compassion as a friend. I remember her confusion and sadness, I remember my family avoiding the news when the children were around for a while (there were many news reports, and not all of them positively covered her father so my family wanted to keep the negativity away from the healing experience), and I remember my confusion and sadness. At 11, it's hard to comprehend murder, anger, workplace violence, mental illness and loss.

As a person with OCD, it becomes an unimaginable worry that lodges in your brain.

This event was definitely one of the roots of my obsession with murderers and my family dying.

I worry about murderers a lot. Not always related to the workplace, but sometimes. It's taken me a long time to manage that fear so it doesn't disrupt my life on a daily basis, but it's a thought/worry that passes through my head several times a week (or more).

Worrying about my family members dying is rarely an obsession anymore. But in my early 20s, when my OCD was at its worst, I was plagued with worries, dreams, thoughts about my family dying. It wasn't always from shootings, actually rarely from shootings, more likely from car crashes. It seemed more likely I suppose. Not that OCD needs a reason to be rational. I woke up crying sobbing for months on end. That obsession gradually faded away and only once in a while does it crop up.

"Going postal" isn't a hugely popular slang phrase. But it's popular enough that I hear it every once in while. It's weird to have an intimate connection with a popular phrase, especially when people use it offhand and have no idea the power behind the phrase, particularly for me. Every time I hear it I have a flash of memories from childhood that pass through my brain. It's not unbearable, it's not even really something I'd call painful, but more this weird feeling of "Oh, you just said that. You have no idea of its weight." Sometimes I educate people about it, sometimes I just let it pass because I know that they didn't mean anything by it and it would cast a shadow over the conversation at hand.

It makes me think about how words have power, even if we don't know it. And it also makes me particularly sensitive to people's requests to not use language that is hurtful. Whether it's the "n word," the "r word," the "t word" or any other word that wounds someone, I don't assume to know why nor do I ask. It's not my business to know why or how it hurts them; I just note it, apologize and pledge to do better. The English language is full of amazing words. Using words that don't hold long histories of pain and personal suffering is a good idea. It can have a tremendous impact on our world if we'd all just try to be a little nicer.

True Story: I cut off my sister's finger...

On ACCIDENT of course. If you've ever hung out with my family and there are small children around you'll notice there are no slamming doors and if someone closes a door in some sort of "game" like play, they'll hear a chorus of voices lecturing that doors are not toys. This is all thanks to me and Hilary.

When Hilary was about 9 months old, my mom one day had ordered Leslie and I to clean up our room (we all shared a room when we lived in our little house in CA) because we have always been messy even when we were little. So Leslie and I were trying to clean while Hilary was doing her best to try and eat some crayons that were on the floor. I picked her up and put her down on the floor just outside the room and started to close the door so she couldn't get back in. As the door slid closed I heard the most awful shriek I have ever heard. I opened up the door to see blood gushing from her tiny little pinkie finger and a pool of blood forming on the ground. Of course my mom had come running and was shocked when she picked up her infant and went running to the kitchen to see the top of Hilary's finger dangling by just a small strip of skin. Apparently Hilary had reached her hand up to the door and put her hand on the lower hinge right at the moment I had closed it. Pinch-a-roo and the top of her finger was neatly lopped almost all the way off.

What happened next is very foggy in my memory. I remember a trail of blood down the hallway, crying hysterically as I kneeled on the floor of the car holding a dishrag to Hilary's finger shrieking "I CUT OFF HER FINGER!!!" while my mom trying to reassure me that I didn't cut off her finger while she drove wildly to my grandma's house (just around the block) to drop us off and pick up my uncle who accompanied her to the ER, and the long, long wait to find out if I'd really cut off my sister's finger for good.

When my parents finally returned to my grandma's house Hilary was exhausted and had a giant club hand that was wrapped up tightly with gauze and medical tape. After hours spent in the ER with a hand specialist & plastic surgeon they were able to run a metal rod down her pinkie finger and reattach the top of her finger with many tiny little stitches and now it was just a matter of waiting to see how her hand would heal. Since she was so little they weren't sure how it would go...would she lose all feeling in her finger, would she lose her fingernail permanently, would she be able to bend her finger appropriately...only time would tell.

I am happy to report that Hilary's finger healed nicely and you can barely tell that anything happened. If you look reallllllly closely you can see a little line all the way around her finger right near her first knuckle where the stitches went all the way around and although her fingernail is a little wonky you probably wouldn't notice unless you knew what had happened and looked at it closely. And Hilary also has the upside of permanently being able to hold it over my head that I cut off her finger, thereby trumping nearly anything she could possibly ever do to me.


Definitely not my best moment of childhood, but glad that it worked out ok for the finger in the end and that future generations of Briggs kids will know the dangers of closing doors.