I’m sorry it’s been a while since I wrote anything for you guys, but I am super swamped at work, riding high on oh, let’s round it off to about 4 cups of coffee, and I just don’t have time for any meaningful, thought-provoking stuff. So instead, you get a story.

So I have this doll, Zhazhee. She has a cloth body and plastic arms and legs and a plastic head with blue eyes that blink when you turn her upside down. She was the first doll I ever had, I still have her, she sits on my dresser with her wobbly plastic head that now droops a little bit and her eyes are always half shut because her cloth body isn’t as strong as it used to be and doesn’t provide as much support. There are pictures of me lying next to her before I could sit up, sitting next to her before I could stand, standing and holding her before I could walk, and walking with her in the backyard of my first house on Kenilworth Avenue, the one I don’t remember. When I was three, I brought her with me to the doctor’s office to keep me company when I got a booster shot. But then I forgot her, left her at the doctor’s by accident, and my mom says I cried all night long and couldn’t sleep and she had to take me back to the doctor’s at 7 am the next morning, the moment the office opened, and she was worried that the doll would be gone and I’d just keep crying and never stop. But Zhazhee was there, sitting on top of their file cabinet, waiting for me.

So one day when Paul and I first started dating, we were over at my dad’s house and my dad started telling stories about me when I was little. He asked if I’d told Paul about Zhazhee and I said no, I had not, because what self-respecting 19-year-old girl tells her new boyfriend about her first babydoll? So then my dad told a few Zhazhee stories, including the one about the doctor’s office. I started telling him stories too, and I mentioned that when Zhazhee got hurt, which well-loved toys tend to do, my parents used to take her to this place called The Doll Hospital and she’d get fixed up.

“It was amazing,” I said, “she’d have a huge gash on her leg or her stuffing would have fallen out, and off she’d go for a week and then she’d come back and be good as new”

“Do you still have Zhazhee?” Paul asked, “I want to see.”

So I ran into the other room and grabbed her off my bed and handed him to her proudly – I was showing Paul one of the things I loved most in the world, sharing a part of who I was, amazed that he seemed genuinely interested – and suddenly Paul started laughing. Laughing and laughing and he couldn’t stop. My father was staring at him with this weird look on his face and I didn’t know what was going on.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said my father, “Nothing at all.”

Paul stifled his laughter, held it for a couple beats, and then just suddenly burst out with “THAT ISN’T THE REAL ZHAZHEE!”

“What?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“THERE WAS NO DOLL HOSPITAL! YOUR PARENTS JUST THREW OUT THE OLD DOLL AND BOUGHT YOU A NEW ONE!”

As it turns out, my father, who did not know Paul well enough yet to know that he cannot keep a secret, any secret, no matter what it is, had leaned over to Paul while I was out of the room and told him the truth. But he had never told me.

And that was how he crushed my childhood with one sentence.

Now I like to use the Zhazhee story for leverage when we argue.

“You forgot to call me back,” Paul will say, “I waited all night for your call.”
“Yeah, well you crushed my childhood,” I’ll tell him.

Sometimes he brings it up as proof that I am probably wrong.

“I’m telling you, the US government really did try to kill Castro. I learned it in school.”
“Oh really?” Paul will ask, “is that where you learned about The Doll Hospital too?”