Payment for a Deprived Childhood ... Or Acting Like a 5-Year-Old

Some little girls want ponies. When I was a little girl, all I wanted was an American Girl doll. I had read all the books, I salivated over the catalogs, I collected the trading cards. I knew which one I'd get--Samantha. I envied my friends who had the dolls. I remember back in the day when the American Girl enterprise was comprised just of three dolls and their books. (It now has eight historical figures, plus three friends, plus choose-your-own doll, plus a magazine, plus three stores, plus a million other things.) My parents told me they weren't going to spend $100 on a doll.

So, when my mother started talking about buying my younger sisters American Girl dolls, I told her that if she got them dolls, I wanted one too as a payment for my deprived childhood. I was joking. Sort of. But on Friday, after a trip to the chaotic circus that is the American Girl Place (I cannot even begin to describe what a Fifth Avenue four-floor store crammed with little girls and their parents dropping hundreds of dollars on dolls looks like) with my mother and sisters, I might just have brought a big red American Girl doll-size shopping bag back to my dorm.

Part of me thinks this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever done and I should take it back. Part of me is more enthralled with my sisters' new dolls (mine is at Columbia and I am home) than they are. Part of me is trying to figure out where to put my new doll in my dorm room ... and wondering if it's OK that she doesn't match my orange-and-pink decor.