An American Girl

About a month before Ella’s birthday this year, she made the proclamation that I knew would come someday but was still dreading, “Daddy, I want an American Girl Doll for my birthday.” I claimed a minor victory in that I held off this conversation for eight years, but deep down, I knew this was a battle that I was going to lose.

So, I did what any girl Dad would do. I took out a second mortgage on the house and sold 80 pints of my plasma so that my little girl would be viewed as socially acceptable by owning her own American Girl Doll.

I avoided the initial voyage to pick out her doll as I would have been useless in that venture. So, Mommy and MeMe lead the initial journey. But I have since learned that The American Girl Store is not a place you visit just once.

So, I recently embarked on my maiden voyage to the store. The Mattel Corporation, which owns the American Girl brand, has created an electronic link between your shoes and the financial institution that holds your savings, because I could feel the money leave my bank account as I took my first steps inside the store.

The purpose of our trip was to visit the hair salon so Ella’s doll, Christy, could get her hair done. As crazy as that sounded to me at first, I realized that we dodged the more ridiculous bullet of having brunch with our doll at the restaurant located in the store.

Once we were inside the salon, I had to watch my daughter get upset because the stylist couldn’t straighten her doll’s curly hair. Apparently, Ella thought that her doll was a real person with human hair. This is not a totally unrealistic expectation due to the fact that Ella has seen me spend more money on clothes and hair styling for this doll than I do for any human member of my family.

As I passed by the Disney Princess section, I realized that the amount of money it would take to purchase that entire line of dolls could feed a third-world nation for the greater part of a century. I felt conflicted because normally, I would be opposed to this extreme example of consumerism.

But I’m going to let this one slide because I see the smile on my little girl’s face when she plays with this doll. Ella built a bedroom for her doll out of an abandoned Amazon box, and she fully furnished the room with her own little creative construction skills. And don’t get me started on how excited she was to wear the matching pajamas that she and Christy got from my sister.

Aunt Amy used this same playbook with her girls, and they turned out pretty great. So, maybe I’m not destroying my little girl after all.

Someday, I will teach my little girl about the harmful effects of materialism, but today is not that day because Ella informed me that Christy needs a sister for Christmas.

I hope I have some plasma left.