When I was a kid, we certainly had toys. We had lots of toys. But, toys were not as wide-spread in all stores at all times of year as they are now. In late fall, the thick Sears-Roebuck catalog would come in the mail. We never ordered anything from Sears-Roebuck, but it was great fun to turn page after page through the toy section to see what new toys we might want to add to our list for Santa. Even as little kids, we knew that some toys were out of our reach.
Back then Barbie dolls were a hot commodity. But, the thing was, Barbie was one doll. The excitement was in collecting ridiculously large amounts of outfits and accessories that you could use to dress Barbie and change her persona. It wasn’t until years later that Mattel realized they could sell separate Barbies with separate personalities, already wearing the clothes they needed for their assigned roles. No more packages of clothes for sale. Buy a whole new Barbie. Whether it was because of the cost, or whether it was more of a statement, I’m not sure why, but my sister and I did not get Barbies. We got Tammies, the cheaper knock-off version. When friends would come over and ask to play with Barbies, we would have to qualify and say, “well, they are actually Tammies, but same thing.” Tammy had a little sister name Pepper, similar to Barbie’s sister Skipper. Barbie clothes were a pretty close fit, although I always thought Tammy wasn’t quite as slim as Barbie. We had a large trunk full of Tammy clothes, because my grandmother’s self-invented contribution to our happiness was to buy McCall’s patterns for Barbie clothes and sew fancy, everyday, whimsical, and modern varieties of outfits for our dolls.
I just looked online to see if I could find a copy of the McCall’s sewing pattern like my grandmother used. I gleefully found a cover photo of an original 1960s pattern for “TEEN FASHION DOLLS INSTANT WARDROBE”, “Fits Barbie, Francie, Casey, Midge, Barbara Joe, Babs, Gina, Annette, Batgirl, Mera, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Tammy, and others.” Wow! What a list of 11-½ inch dolls!
There’s one part of the Tammy story that I haven’t mentioned. The fact that we never got Barbies always nagged at me. Yes, the Tammies were fun. Yes, we had everything we needed to play with them. A car? Check. A kitchen? Check. Pets and props, and other stuff? Check, check, check. But, something about knowing that Tammy wasn’t quite as good as Barbie bothered me. Maybe, I would not be as good as other kids, no matter how hard I tried? It wasn’t something that I dwelled on, but it was something that made me wonder.
As far as toys go, I remember an event that happened to my sister and I when I was young. An event that would repeat itself over and over, for pretty much my whole life. The actual event wouldn’t repeat, but the way I handled the event, the way I reasoned and thought, would repeat. Sounds mysterious—let me explain.
My sister and I were sitting on the front porch of our house with new coloring books and a container of crayons. This was the extra-large set of crayons, which had 5 or 6 different shades of blue, and 5 or 6 different shades of green, and multiple variations of all the other colors. I can’t remember exactly which one of us had THE crayon first. So, either I had THE crayon and colored my ocean water, or she had THE crayon and colored her sky. Whichever way it was, the other kid said “I like that color, can I use it next?” Then, there was some general coloring, getting distracted, hopping up, starting again, the way kids carry on. When we got back to our pictures, one of us reached for THE crayon we had talked about. It wasn’t there! We looked all around. We pulled out every crayon from the box. We looked under things, in our clothes, everywhere we could think. THE crayon had gone missing! We fussed and whined—it was such a beautiful color, it was the color of ocean, the color of sky! We had never seen a color that looked so gorgeous. How could we go on without that crayon in our lives?????
Our mom called us for dinner, so we reluctantly picked up our stuff and marched back into the house. We laid out our woes at the table, but soon the conversation moved on. A few days went by, then, my dad walked into the house holding out a crayon. What??? Could it be??? YOU FOUND IT!!!!! He was slightly taken aback, then told us that the crayon had rolled under the flower pot. IT’S NOT LOST!!! HURRAAAYYYYY!!!!! We immediately grabbed our coloring books and busied ourselves getting set up. Finally, my sister said “OK, I want to use the crayon.” “What?” I asked. “You know”, she said, “The color-that’s-not-lost.” “Oh, right. Okay, here it is.”
From that day onward, the special crayon was dubbed the color-that’s-not-lost. Not just the crayon, but the color, itself. If we were walking through a store and saw a shirt of that color, we would say “hey, look, it’s the color-that’s-not-lost”. Also, “Can you hand me the color-that's-not-lost notebook?" Or, “Look how pretty that bird is with the color-that’s-not-lost feathers.” All the time. At times, I noticed that the crayon had a word written on it, a word that started with the letter T, followed by a lot of letters, including a Q. I didn’t know what that was all about, so I ignored it.
Did my parents notice what we were saying? If they did, I think they thought we were being silly. I don’t remember them correcting either one of us. The sad thing, or maybe the puzzling thing, is that I never questioned whether I was using the correct name for the color. Never thought about it once. In my mind, red was red, yellow was yellow, the color-that’s-not-lost was the color-that’s-not-lost. How weird is that? This went on for an embarrassingly long time. Years. I vaguely remember a friend asking me what was I talking about, but I dismissed her concerns, because I knew what I was talking about. I can’t tell you how old I was when I finally got it. Maybe my sister already knew—maybe she thought it was an inside joke. I don’t remember when, but I remember matter-of-factly saying the color-that’s-not-lost out loud and then freezing. It was like I was hearing it for the first time. The color-that’s-not-lost? What kind of name is that? I think I was too embarrassed to ask my friends, but I do remember showing the color to my dad and asking what the name was. He chuckled and said “Turquoise.” Could that be right? Had I spent years saying the wrong name, not just the wrong name, but a ridiculously wrong name? Good grief. (side-note: I couldn't get the correct shade of blue to display above, so use your imagination to see a true version of the color-that's-not-lost.)
How does that story repeat itself throughout my life? In trivial ways, like saying Human Beans, for years and years. Until as a teenager, I asked my mom why we were referred to a beans. “You mean Beings?” she said. It repeats in other ways, when I think I know what I am talking about, often, because I have a tiny piece of information that gives me confidence. Turns out I don’t know jack about it, and I embarrass myself by pretending that I do.
I, maybe we all, like to think I have things figured out, I know what’s what. It’s just that, so many times, I find myself talking about topics with the color-that’s-not-lost logic, sadly, my interpretation of things. Not reality. All too often, I realize later that I didn’t understand, didn’t get all the facts, didn’t listen to others, didn’t really know what I was talking about.
What can I do about it? Hopefully, learn to listen. And to talk less. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. I may be a Tammy in a Barbie world, but I know can contribute, and I know I can make it. All my life, my favorite cartoon character has been Snoopy. Snoopy, Joe Cool himself, has got the right attitude. The best plan of action, as Snoopy would say, is “Learn from Yesterday, Live for Today, Look to Tomorrow, Rest this Afternoon.”
The color-that's -not- lost is still my favorite color today. Love my sister's blogs!