BARBIE & FRIENDS

QUOTE:
If Barbie is so popular,
why do you have to buy her friends?

I have to admit I love this quote for two reasons.

First, its just damn funny! :-) Second it reminds me of my very early childhood when I WISHED it were true! Go to the store, find a friend or two in a box, guaranteed to like you because the box declared it to be so! Really, it did! Did you read the box? It clearly said "MIDGE, Barbie's best friend"!

I searched the shelves at the stores every time I went, but my young eyes never found a box (or a person) with a banner exclaiming they'd be my best friend if I paid the purchase price! I never found it declared that someone would be my friend if I took them to the counter, and paid the sticker price.

Or did I?

Thinking about it from 'adult-land' all these years later, I realize that from the beginning of your life relationships are tricky if not downright peculiar things and they all have an 'investment' required. Not so bold or tacky as a 'purchase price' but no relationship comes for free. Some 'cost' more, some less. Some come with lots of extras (so many that you think too many must have been packed in the box by mistake!) Other relationships seem to have "parts missing". But you cant' take them back to the store for an exchange.... I'm thinking of no one - and everyone - that I've ever known in my life and it's just struck me that there are a fair number of parallels between 'BARBIE' and her social issues and many of us (ok me at least, I'll leave everyone else to their own ponderings on the topic).

Barbie's parents are never mentioned so she must have been all set there! lol You did have to buy her sister (but who among us has not bought off a sibling! OR tried to sell one off for that matter!!!! roflmao!)

But friends now that's a tricky one.... You choose your friends for no reason other than the fact that you like each other. It's a renewable contract sort of thing I think. Some contracts get renewed, some don't. Sometimes you get given away in a trade of reality, sometimes you are tucked safely in a drawer - not devalued but put away for better times. Sometimes you are chosen but then (gasp!) taken back to customer service for exchange for a newer friend as you were only purchased for the moment and once that moment/need passes so does the need for you.

But best of all are the times you are chosen off the shelf as a friend and kept around forever. The times you become such an integral part of someones life that you're there till your fingers point in funny directions and your hair is brittle.*(remember this is a DOLL analogy and you may recall barbies fingers were kind of thin and would take an odd bend or break off when she got old! lol) Funny pointing fingers, brittle hair, but cherished...

Now that's the kind of friend you want to pick off the shelf (and the kind of friend you want to BE if someone chooses you and takes you to the counter.....).

My point? I'm not the least bit certain. Just thinking out loud.

I wonder if BARBIE has any insights to add...
I'll have to get her out of the cedar chest and ask her.