That's a picture of me and my sister Melanie with our favorite Christmas gifts of Christmas 1901, or whatever year was so long ago that my parents saw fit to dress me in such hideous pants. But this isn't a story about those pants. It's not about my robot buddy, either. It's not even about my clown-sized shoes. This is a story about Mrs. Beasley. If you're an old dude like me, you might remember a little TV show called "Family Affair." Despite it's suggestive title, Family Affair wasn't about incest, but about an old drunk and his butler trying to raise 3 children who were orphaned, and apparently related to the afore-mentioned drunk (and confirmed bachelor!) as the children all referred to him as "Uncle Bill." Uncle Bill is actually the most normal character name on this show, which also featured a little boy named Jody, a teenage girl who cheerfully let everyone call her Cissy, a little girl named Buffy (long before the vampire slayer of the same name) and most mysteriously of all, the bearded English butler who went by the name Mr. French. An even greater mystery is that my sister and I were utterly obsessed with this show. Looking back, I don't understand why, so I attribute it to the fact that these were the days when there were only 3 local channels to choose from, and the other two channels were probably showing something in black and white. Anyway, Melanie's obsession with this show extended to Buffy's doll, Mrs. Beasley. Buffy loved the doll, and used it to manipulate French into giving her shit like double deserts, one for Buffy and one for Mrs. Beasley. I guess Melanie wanted to get in on some of that illicit desert action, because she only wanted that creepy doll for Christmas. She didn't even ask for anything else. As you can see, Melanie got what she wanted (except our mom didn't fall for the transparent double desert scheme.) For what seemed like years in kid time, but was probably only a couple of months, Melanie and that doll were inseparable. She slept with it, ate with it, even went to the bathroom with it. Then Melanie had a nightmare. In the nightmare, Mrs. Beasley tried to kill Melanie. She woke up one night screaming and crying, pointing at the stupid ugly doll. She told us about the dream, and asked my parents to get rid of Mrs. Beasley. They agreed and removed the doll from the room, figuring all would be forgotten and she'd want it back the next morning. No dice. The next morning Melanie walked by their bedroom, saw the doll in the corner, and started screaming. Being a big brother and seeing how much the doll upset her, I held and comforted my little sister. Yeah, right. If you believe that, you must be an only child. I chased her around the house with the doll until my parents got it from me and physically restrained me. They got rid of the doll for good. They said they gave it to another little girl who was really happy to get it, but that story has the smell of parent bullshit all over it. It did the trick at the time, though. And even though the doll was gone, I was able to get mileage from it for a couple more months, when a well timed menacing shout of "Mrs. Beasley!" was enough to make Melanie start bawling. Good times.
2 comments:
As an only child, I can only say your brutish childhood sibling-terrorizing antics have shaken me to my very core. I am sitting here with a shaken core.
It actually reminds me of the TV trailer to "Magic" and how it scared me so badly that I had nightmares about it for about a year and wheneveer the trailer came on the TV I was paralyzed in my chair, afraid to move, thinking if I looked anywhere the doll would suddenly pop up. That's my "fear of a doll/puppet" story.
Dude, those pants are special.
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