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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
| In Search of Mystery Date |
| 09.28.04 (8:09 am) [edit] |
|
As much as I try to tout my East Toledo tough girl persona; I have come to the conclusion that I am merely a sentimental sap of a woman. A sap, who upon spying a bent-up, once white Barbie shoe in a sidewalk crack outside of church, took five minutes out of her life and ruined a perfectly lovely pen to dig it up and place it in her purse. The shoe was bent and covered with sand, barely recognizable, yet I had to have it. Tough girl, indeed. It’s not that there aren’t traces left of the rough-around-the-edges, no frills, exceedingly sarcastic, Little King’s guzzling, Aerosmith groupie from Morrison R. Waite High School; but, let’s face it, I’m carrying a Barbie shoe in my purse. I don’t know what that means exactly, but, I’m sure that in East Toledo terms it’s worth an ass-kicking. I realize that it’s really not about an old Barbie shoe. It’s about a seven-year-old girl, finally able to cross the street by herself, weighed down by a shiny, black plastic case busting at the seams with miniature fashion ensembles. It’s an old front porch on Plymouth Street, covered with plastic furniture, more dresses than a Hollywood musical and Barbie and Ken, naked and unashamed, smashed together in some sort of odd mating ritual to the sound of hysterical giggling. My interest in Barbie’s love life eventually waned as I turned my attention to Nancy Drew. Nancy was my role model; driven, intelligent, wise, and tenacious. She didn’t take no for an answer and she made me ashamed that I had spent so many hours deciding which evening gown Barbie should wear to the grocery store. Sadly, Nancy’s once wholesome look has been updated for today’s more sophisticated reader and when she’s not solving mysteries you will probably find the new voluptuous Nancy Drew serving up wings at Hooters. Unfortunately, there weren’t many mysteries to solve in my 1960s Middle American neighborhood. Occasionally, the container of macaroni and cheese that I made and hid in the vegetable bin came up missing, but that could usually be traced back to Lisa, who would sleep with the Tupperware dish under her pillow to spite me. Nancy’s neighborhood must have been a whole lot more interesting, because the Mystery of the Missing Mac and Cheese, was a far cry from the Mystery of the Hidden Staircase. Having read my way through all of Nancy’s mysteries and having none of my own to solve, I turned my attention to something equally as intriguing… boys. That, in and of itself, is a mystery. One day you won’t go near them because their noses are always dripping with snot and you want to make sure that you don’t catch whatever it is that makes them smell so bad, and before you can say puberty, you find yourself playing touch football and trying to get tackled so you can smell them on purpose. So, anyway, there I was, minding my own business… shamelessly trying to smell boys, when my life was forever changed by the genius of none other than Milton Bradley. While teenaged boys were off conjuring up their fantasy’s by sneaking Playboy, the girls were in living rooms across America exploring a rich fantasy life of their own… not with a magazine but, a little board game called "Mystery Date". Luckily for us girls, we didn’t have to hide in the back room of someone’s basement with a flashlight or spend the next 20 years trying to convince people that we actually played it for the "interesting articles". One thing was for sure though, someone had managed to devise a game that got into the psyche of pubescent girls better than Ben and Jerry ever could. Imagine, being twelve and discovering a game that combined mystery, fashion, AND boys. You were a goner just from the picture on the cover…girls on one side of the door dressed in a cheerleader uniform, ski garb and a beautiful pink fluffy prom dress. On the other side an entire line up of boys; all sorts of boys… athletic boys, beach clad boys, and of course the dreamy hunk in a tux. Meet your Secret Admirer… read the tagline. Like takin’ candy from a baby. On the inside was this cool door that you would close and turn the handle and when you opened it… surprise…a blind date! We played the 1965 version even though I’m sure the 1972 version was around. Even then I was a purist, I liked the original… don’t try to fool me with some updated substitute… like Nancy Drew with a boob job. I tried to find it on Ebay several years ago and I did… for about $200. I couldn’t rationalize it then and I certainly can’t now. But, there is something about it that made me stop and consider it for a little while at least. When you played Mystery Date, it didn’t matter where you came from. It didn’t matter if you were plain and gawky and were the last one in your class to buy a training bra. Mystery Date put you on an equal playing field and for a little bit allowed you to feel as confident as Nancy Drew and as beautiful as Barbie. Just thinking about it, makes me tilt my head sideways and utter…dreamy. I would love to play it with my girls; to lay on the floor with a Pepsi, a bowl of chips and french onion dip and twist the knob on the white plastic door. To float back and imagine myself as one of the couples at the beach, bowling or looking into each other’s eyes on prom night. After thirty years, my strategy would be a little different. I would skip the fair-haired boy in the tux because at our ten year reunion he will be the one who has gained 70 pounds, is dressed like a lounge singer, and still buys Little Kings by the case. The nerd, however, is running Microsoft and has a credit limit that could buy you all of the clothes and accessories on the cards and then some. I think, when all is said and done, I would try to find the boy who could make me laugh; the smart, confident, irreverent one who liked to break a rule now and then. The boy who thought that I was as smart as Nancy Drew and as pretty as Barbie… no matter when I got my training bra. He was probably one of the nice boys standing somewhere in the middle and I never gave him notice because my mind was so set on getting the ‘prince’ and avoiding the toad. Maybe we’d be better off to stick with the basics. To find a boy who smells good and see how it goes from there. In the mystery of attraction it seems like that is as good a place to start as any. |
posted by: Craig (reply)
post date: 09.30.04 (3:32 pm)
I like this one best so far. Keep up the good work.
posted by: mimi (reply)
post date: 10.24.06 (8:20 pm)
I could have been playing along with you and your friends...and Nancy Drew! what would our lives have ever been without her! flashlights under the covers to finish the spinetingling last few chapters! wow! what a great post! xoxo
Grace, beauty, humor, strength.
Alison Haley Cloud
Nov. 16, 1987-March 1, 2005
