Friday, November 7, 2008

Playing Pollys

This morning I played Polly Pockets (or "Pa-tets") with Jenna. For the uninitiated, Polly Pocket is a 4 inch tall teenage- or-so small plastic doll who is ridiculously skinny and has enormous head and hair. There is a main character, Polly, and all of her friends, who have various hair colors and styles and eye colors. They are all into fashion and the main gist of playing Polly Pocket is changing her into many, many different outfits. The "clothes" are made of a really soft, flexible rubber and it is almost impossible for a three or four year old with normally developed fine motor skills to dress and undress the Pollys. I cannot tell you how many times I have had one of my daughters wordlessly approach me, Polly and clothing in hand, and I just automatically grab the handful of plastic, put the new clothes on and hand it back, never missing a beat.
The bane of Dan's existence for years has been Polly Pocket shoes, whose size can only be measured in millimeters, and have managed to find their way into almost every hidden corner and nook in our house. And there are just millions of them. It took us a few years to realize we can just throw out the shoes as soon as we get any new "outfits" for Polly and Michaela was none the wiser.
So now we're experiencing our second generation of Polly Pocket player- Jenna- and we're more savvy this time around.
Jenna and I sat on the couch and played for about a half hour. This is what I learned:
1. Clothes are optional. Pollys come with painted on underwear which Jenna calls their bathing suits. That is enough.
2. The main activity is getting married. White dresses must be worn for this.
3. Everyone kisses when they greet each other.
4. Frequently, the Pollys lay down and go to sleep. When it's time to get up, Jenna says, "Cock-a-doodle-doooo! It's da mornin'!" which is funny to me because she says "It's da mornin'!" every morning to me to prove to me it's time to wake up.
5. Polygamous marriages are a-okay.
6. Often a Polly girl needs assistance and yells "Help!!" and needs a boy Polly (who, of course, are all raging metrosexuals) to rescue her. I was not able to identify what the real danger was, but the rescues often lead to kissing and then getting married.
7. One of the Polly girls, "Lisa" is a good singer. Her favorite song is the ABC's. She is also available to sing at weddings.

And that is basically it: lots of kissing, hugging, rescuing, marrying, and sleeping.
Someone's watched a few too many Disney Princess movies.

PS- Jenna has kept me company as I wrote this... I have had my teeth inspected with a paper clip (doe-ing to the dentist), I have given my food order (playing service) and she has read me several books and taken great liberty with the actual content. She also dragged the cash register over to the desk and I was chastised that she only had four dollars of play money. I finished up by speaking into a microphone. So if my writing isn't at it's sharpest, blame my sidekick.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brings back memories of a certain Barbie doll fan who hid her Barbie stuff under her bed once when asked to put it away and when her younger brother heard me having a fit while vacuuming gleefully cheered, "Is she gonna get it? Is she gonna get it?" because YOU were NEVER in trouble and HE was ALWAYS in trouble! Ah, the memories! Barbie shoes AND Legos were rough on bare feet as well. Every generation has its banes of existence for parents-mine was a Lego-like block that I built houses with-oh, such fun. I am taking a trip down the proverbial memory lane-such fun! AND now I have 3 granddaughters to love and spoil-yeah!!! Mommy/Gammie

Anonymous said...

Polly Pockets sound like fun. Maybe we can play that when we have HM marathon weekend. I particurly like the "bathing suits" I wish hot girls would be so understanding.
Uncle Jimmy/Jimbo