On It Being A Hard Knock Life

For my fourth birthday I received my very own cabbage patch doll. She was no ordinary doll, oh no! She was a one of a kind, hot off the press, premier edition: never been done before, never to be repeated, and made by my own sweet mother.

She was my mother's very first cabbage patch doll and mine. She had tight orange-red yarn curls and big blue eyes painted on her face with fabric paint and even tiny embroidered freckles and puckers in the bottom folds of her cheeks for dimples. I named her Annie.

Annie was just like me-- down to the dimples-- except for one big difference: Annie was fat. Eager in making her very first doll, Mom had stuffed Annie a little past chubby and into the chunky category. Annie's large-sized doll wardrobe barely snapped shut over her thickly padded arms and waist. At four years old, I was not a midget but I certainly wasn't fat and perhaps was the smallest of the four girls in the family. Although Annie was the first, my mother soon made cabbage patch dolls for my three sisters, and she compensated for Annie's fatness by understuffing Alice and Tina and even Sally. And so, ironically, Annie got the flack at doll tea parties for always being so fat while I avoided the same pressure in real life that haunted some of my other siblings.

Yes, Annie was the one with the fattest pinafore and the fattest pantaloons, which bulged out over her chubby knees, bringing extra flounce to her skirts. Annie's XL clothing drowned the other dolls and I always felt jealous when Alice could wear Sally's jackets but poor Annie had only her own clothes to wear.

Today at school we had pre-Halloween and I dressed up as Little Orphan Annie, complete with a red curly wig (which was actually quite redundant since I have red curly hair). The costume was a grand success. Everyone laughed and smiled and clapped their hands. Even my students got into the costume. At the end of the day Father Tito came in and took my picture for the yearbook.

It was quite possibly the most darling picture you have ever seen in your whole life of someone in an Annie costume. Not only am I curtesying, but my face just carries enough of the mix of impish charm and childlike innocence to convince the viewer that I'm precocious and lovable even to a grumpy bald millionaire.

The only difference between me in the picture and the Little Orphan Annie we all know and love from the movies is that.... I'm fat.

Yes.

It's true.

In the picture, I look horribly, hopelessly fat. I'm wearing this white bow right across the middle of my dress and it looks like a whole bedsheet had to be used to girdle my waist. I'm almost spilling into the sides of my curtsy. I realize, to my horror, that in dressing up like Little Orphan Annie I have realized the fate predestined to me from childhood:

I have become my doll Annie.

Oh yes! I still have a mass of red curls, freckles on my face, and funny side dimples. But what I have now that I didn't have at four is about ninety extra pounds that have added padding to my knees and toes and elbows, all the spots where Annie is bulgiest I suddenly feel bulgy now too. If it weren't for the Annie costume, I may never have noticed.

When I finally got home from school, I hurriedly pulled off my wig, red dress, and (poofy) bloomers, slapped on some tennis shoes and went for a run. Maybe when I'm back at school tomorrow dressed just like myself the illusion will go away.