Growing Up Eighties, Chuckie, 1

My brother is nearly four years younger than me, so it is fair to say that when he was born, I had every right to think of him as an extended edition to my Cabbage Patch Doll collection.

He was the perfect size. I wanted to line him up with my dolls and have a tea party. Some of the other dolls objected. Typically, I made the blonde dolls object because I was a brunette and the blondes were always the instigators. They didn’t want to have a boy at the party, so we all settled for a bow on his head. He was now decidedly more feminine. The bow was easy to find. The back of Mom’s closet in the basket that held the Christmas wrapping paper and bows and generic cards that read Happy Birthday and were completely blank inside.

As a baby, and because of his similarities to my dolls, I had a hard time understanding his fragility. Baby swings in the Eighties were not as safe as swings today. Actually, nothing was safe.

I was playing with my My Little Ponies in the living room. Mom was sewing, or at least I remember her sewing. And Chuckie was gingerly swaying back and forth in his Death Swing. He was tiny, premature, so he kept sliding and it bothered me. Why couldn’t he just keep his head up? I was annoyed.

The phone rang. This is before, um, cordless phones. So Mom runs into the kitchen, giving me about thirty seconds to fix the problem with Chuckie’s lazy head.

From my four-year-old tool belt, I pulled a jump rope. Yes. I’m a genius. Looping the jump rope around his neck, I tossed the plastic handles over the top of the Death Swing and tied a knot. Just before I could test my solution to the Chuckie’s Lazy Head Problem, my mom runs into the living room, screaming “OH MY GOD!” and I ran upstairs into my bedroom, crying, sobbing hysterically. For the record, I wasn’t trying to kill him. I wasn’t an evil child. And I wish that the Death Swing story were the only of it’s kind.