3. Betty Jane gets a Make-Over
When Betty Jane (Notorious music critic, companion, and a 58 year old doll, with a proclivity for mischief, mayhem, and mystery) first came into my life , she was almost too pretty to be taken seriously. Oddly enough, though — as it is for us all, her beauty was really internal, and was in the eye of this beholder. But above all else, Betty Jane was clever, with many other virtues besides the serious look on her face. Besides her classic beauty, she was the smartest of all my dolls. What I remember most was her wardrobe. It was extensive, coordinated, and she had two pairs of shoes. As did I at the time. My mother had made all her clothes while I was in nursery school, and Mom found the little “dolly trunk” at a local toy-store in Fairborne, Ohio, where we lived at that time. The trunk was a treasure, but no longer with us. It served her well when we had it, not only to keep her wardrobe together, but it appeared many times, having many a nefarious purpose, including hiding another doll’s corpse during the “adventures of Foxie and Betty Jane” that my brother and I cooked up in our ‘yout..’
I’m not very sure about what happened to her hair, which is to say : I rememberize1her hair when she was new as being long and blonde. I do remember the unfortunate hair cut and dye job ( done with grass sheers and mercurochrome) that I do believe was my own work. But now that she is once again in action, her hair looks worse that arey an egret, and I was determined to change what had been done (by me) to help my old friend and equal in the food chain of this household. So I started her make-over with the hair. Always a good choice. “You can’t tell a book by looking at the cover,” but a doll with a mangy old rotting wig will just plain turn off a tornado. It also looks really bad and sad. Fortunately, I possessed a strange hair piece that made my own mangy pony tail appear (then blonde) a whole lot better than the reality of my own said “-do.”
So, I took my trusty pinch-nosed pliers and ripped that wig right off her plastic, egg shaped head. (“Oh,ouch, the internal injuries… etc.,” exclaimed Betty Jane, but her expression remained stoic. That’s one thing that’s really great about having a doll with a straight face. They generally don’t change moods. (“yow, ouch”)–Even during painful events.
When she came back into my life in 2005, her hair had gone over to the dark side, and she still had her awkward posture and “baseball-hip”. (There is an injury many a baseball player has, in which the thumb is shoved into the relatively large synovial cavity of the first metacarpal joint. The corresponding inflammation in the thumb from catching a hard ball with the thumb is liable to be followed by abscesses in the forearm from extension of the inflammation along the continuous synovial sheaths. The particular synovial anatomy of the hand (in that the thumb and little finger, for what ever reason the Lord made those fingers a tad anotomically different from the others ) is such that the fluid can be forced from the one swelling to the other, under the ligament. (Not that you needed to know that…). But in Betty Jane’s case, her baseball leg had been shoved into her torso (ouch ) during an explosion prepared by my much admired brother, who was a pyromaniacal kid back then. But I am in digression as usual; the hairdo problem with Betty Jane, must have happened in 1952, as I got her in 1951, when her contenance was much too pretty for out door work.
As it is now “Gray Slop” or Winter in Austin, I tend to look forward to the ridiculous and semi-improbable duties I get to perform, such as just last month, some one else, besides myself,noticed that my own hair-do was ‘in a yellow alert mode’, too — as the gray of my hair became a seasonal liability, a camouflage for disappearing into the scenery. Sort of like a hunter with no red vest… Who cares if I go bald? No one would notice except Charles. However, going blond if gray, is one Hell of a lot easier than going gray from blond, as I remarked in the past. Charles looks forward to these times when I am Not remarking anything at all. That’s why I get to tell you these stupid stories (however true they are) as even HE cannot withstand the test of time when the rubber meets the road or when a jabbering idiot is in 4th gear, even if that jabbering idiot has an artistic flare for detail. (‘Wonders will never cease’and after all, God is in the details) ha ha.
Betty Jane is not as fond of the Christmas season, as some of us are, in that it is her request to be boxed after thanksgiving. Yes, she still closes her eyes when she sleeps, even though I performed cataract surgery pre-holiday ,this last year. I tried to restructure the color of her eyes, and succeeded using fancy artsy, two-ended extra fine markers for the iris, a black perminent marker for the pupil and topped that off with some clear nail polish applied with a tiny brush in a thin coat. The eyes have it. All I need to do now, as I also fixed her hip problem by yanking the little plastic leg out of her torso, with great precision…is work on her wardrobe (she has one pair of underpants with Monday written next to a flower. ) That part could take a while, however you may enjoy the tale of how she achieved that base ball hip. And I will post her picture now that she is once again too pretty to go outside.
Chapter 2 in Betty Jane’s Makeover to be continued ,until whenever Charles can’t stand to hear me (Otra Vez) . Probably tomorrow.
We will have to wait on the picture of Betty Janes’s new look, as she has refused to cooperate. Hopefully, tomorrow –on that too.
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(1.) Mance Libscomb, “rememberize” in his introduction to “Smile on, smile on Harvest Moon”; DVD