When I was thirteen we moved and that doll was left, sitting on a top shelf, all alone. Heavy sigh! My mother kept insisting it was packed. She lied!  During those thirteen years, I only touched it once and that was for this picture..

My mother thought it was cursed or something.

 I had gotten very ill after that picture was taken and nearly died. So, no matter how many times I told my mother I wasn’t dead, she still wouldn’t let me play with the doll.

I remember staring up at it, sitting all by itself, in its box, thinking how pretty she looked.  Every day I said, hello to her. One day I made an attempt to drag a chair over to the shelf and try and reach her.  I nearly fell off the shelf, and I nearly got caught.

 Luckily my sister, my partner in crime, had wanted to play with her, too.  She had been holding the chair steady.  She stood by silent, as my mother waggled her fingers at us and told us over and over again, how that doll got me sick…

Poor pretty little doll! She seemed so lonely.

My mother must have thought my comics were cursed; she tossed them out when I was fifteen.

I copied the flip side of that newspaper clipping; Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak.