Special Friends

She was young, no more than seven-years-old when she first knew she was different from any of the girls she knew. Other than her liking to play with dolls, there were no other girl-like activities in her life. She hated wearing dresses and never understood why she was continually being forced into one. Her preferred attire had always been jeans and a tee-shirt, exactly the same as her older brother wore. It never seemed fair to her when she was being scolded for wearing something so comfortable.

Playing with dolls had mostly come about after watching her brother torture the poor things when he stole them from their older sister�s closet. The girl watched the dolls being hung from shoelaces while their hair was hacked off and pins were pushed through spots where nipples and genitals would be, if they had been anatomically correct. For some reason this disturbed the young child and the moment her brother was finished with his cruelty, the silly young girl found herself pulling the tortured dolls from the box, taking them to a quiet corner of the house where she clung to them and quietly apologized for her brother�s ignorance. Yes, she was a strange child, yet she knew her apology had been accepted as she noticed the sincerity in their smiles.

It took this one occasion for the young girl to realize that these dolls were the only way she would ever be allowed to express herself, her own desires, urges and fears. These dolls would wind up being the girl�s only friends and most definitely the closest friends she would ever have. No body else could ever be trusted with her deep, dark secrets the way those dolls would be.

Finding time to play with her new best friends was never a problem for the child. She could be in any part of the house and it seemed the only time anybody in her family ever took the slightest interest in where she might be, was at meal time. It was the same every day as her mother would ask the other family members if any of them had seen the young girl throughout the day and the child would always shout out her position, letting them know she had been right there all day. This was her life, living in a home where she didn�t exist, only being noticed when she was being forced to do something she didn�t want to do.

This would be the girl�s life for years to come and whenever bad things would happen to her, the only people she would talk to about how she was truly feeling, would be her quiet friends. In their own way, they always comforted her and the moment her mother noticed the young girl�s interest in the dolls, she bought her new ones. Better to buy affection than to show it, always the mother�s motto.

The child was allowed to pick a new doll whenever the family went shopping out of town and before long, the girl had every �G.I. Joe� she liked as well as the entire �Johnny West� family member. Along with those were added, several American Indians as well as a few army men and the entire horse collection. The girl loved horses from the time she was a child and to have them in her corral was a wonderful experience for the youngster.

These dolls lived the life she wished they could and they thanked her for allowing them to do so with their constant smiles. They were loving families and they helped one another, never forgot they were in the house, never tried being inappropriate with each other. She could never get enough of her dolls, but boys and girls going out on dates never seemed natural to the young girl, so as she grew older, the boys dated boys while the girls only went out with each other. She allowed them to kiss and cuddle and was thankful by then for living in a home where she was invisible because she wouldn�t be scolded for allowing her friends to behave in such a manner.

As time passed by the young girl, she would be chastised for playing with her dolls and her family began to notice when she did because they thought it was wrong. She had come to accept the fact that the only time her family truly took notice of her existence was when they thought she was different or doing something unacceptable. So the dolls were carefully and lovingly packed away, only to be visited on very special occasions and when the girl moved away from home, her best friends were put on a shelf in the basement where her mother told her to leave them, they would be fine and being who she was, did as she was told.

The girl was doing college homework the night she heard the sirens and as her mother burst through her front door, she screamed that the house was on fire. The young lady ran three doors down to see the home she grew up in with smoke flying out of every opening. The basement was in flames while the remainder of the house filled with poisonous fumes.

Life after the fire brought about an interesting turn of events as her parents and brother automatically assumed it was fine to take over the young woman�s home. She never invited them, but she put up with them until being told her drunken brother was solely responsible for the destruction of everything the teenager held dear. Only then did she walk out of her home and into the house of a friend.

Walking through her own home after the fire was a traumatic experience for the teenager and when she made her way to the shelf to check on her best friends, some had actually survived the fire, but were damaged beyond repair. All of the horses were a melted mass of hard plastic and the innocence of the figures, along with the smell the girl loved, was gone.

From the single event of carelessness to cause the fire, the girl no longer felt she had unscarred friends to confide in and any other horrific events in her life would be kept deep within. This would be the first time the teenager knew she was truly on her own, but she would always survive. There wasn�t a doubt in her mind about life going on, it was a given.

The woman in her 40�s smiled fondly into the faces as she tried unsuccessfully to wash the residue from her old best friends. They were coming out of their box after all those years and being given to her granddaughter.

After the fire, the girl found a new best friend, one who wasn�t plastic and still one who could keep her secrets as well as her old confidants. The transition hadn�t been an easy one, but the two women eventually discovered a very special relationship. The woman found something special in her new best friend, something she never thought she would find after the fire and even though she knew their granddaughter would never have the special connection she once had with the plastic figures, she smiled because it felt right.

Everything seemed as it should be and the woman�s special friends still held an important role in her life. It would be calming to see her old friend�s faces when they were played with again, remembering how important those smiles were to her as a child. Such very special friends.