
During my third-grade year, Cabbage Patch Kid fever swept the country. Little girls (mainly) couldn’t get enough of these dolls with their hard faces and soft bodies. Each doll came with an official birth certificate with a name, and date and time of birth—details you could only discover when you purchased the doll and opened the package.
I remember when they released the first little boy Cabbage Patch Kid. I met him on a shelf at Kmart. He had curly, blond hair and (literally) rosy cheeks. He wore light brown overalls fringed with red. I didn’t know his name, but I had to have him.
In those days, Kmart had a layaway program—a bulwark against instant gratification. Basically, such a program allowed a person to set aside something they wanted to buy until they had sufficient funds to make the purchase. So, my eight-year old self marched the doll to the layaway department at the back of the store. And there he sat and waited for five months as I did extra chores for my parents and grandparents. With each window I cleaned, each floor I swept, each leaf I raked, I inched closer to him.
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