By Jim Hagarty
1989
My sister told me all her two oldest daughters needed from me for Christmas were dolls. So I got them dolls. Female dolls identical in every respect except one had blond hair and one black, and one wore a blue polka dot dress, the other pink. The name on the outside of the two identical boxes they came in was Sandy.
On Christmas Eve, I gave the girls’ baby sister a stuffed toy bird in a plastic cage and then presented my nieces with their dolls. Knowing they couldn’t read the name Sandy on the boxes and not wanting both dolls to have the same name, I told the girls they’d have to think up their own names for the dolls.
With little hesitation, my older niece Erin announced: “I’m going to call my dolly, Tiffany.” Such a feminine name from such a feminine girl could have been predicted. Her four other dolls are called Jacqueline, Emily, Suzie and Heather.
All that was left to be decided was what her sister Stephanie, a little more rough and tumble type, would name hers.
“And what’re you going to call your dolly, Stephanie?” I asked her as she gazed in satisfaction at her new little plastic friend. She opened her mouth, about to announce her decision. But before she could speak, my sister’s neighbour, who was visiting, piped up in jest: “Call it Wilfred.”
“I’m gonna call my dolly Wilfred,” echoed Stephanie, with all the conviction of one who had been thinking about this for a very long time.
So the two girls set about playing with their dolls, each in her own way. Erin primped Tiffany’s dress and fussed with her hair, bent her movable arms and legs and helped her walk daintily across the top of the coffee table as if she was in a fashion show. Stephanie and Wilfred, on the other hand, found less dignified fun to get involved in.
“Can you open this cage, Uncle Jim?” asked Stephanie, as she handed me her younger sister’s Christmas present.
I removed the plastic bottom of the cage and handed it, with toy bird still inside, back to Stephanie. The bird, a big, colourful replica of a tucan, was soon yanked from its perch and tossed onto the floor and in went Wilfred, the little blond doll with the blue dress. With the cage bottom firmly back in place, Wilfred looked out from behind the plastic bars as her new owner hauled her around the room showing her off.
A few minutes later, I was called on again to open the cage and Wilfred was set free, this time to take up a new role as an airplane. For the next while, the doll, held firmly in the hand of one of Stephanie’s outstretched arms, flew around the room like a jumbo jet, making zooming noises and swooping deftly over furniture and under lamps to make perfect landings on the same coffee table that Tiffany had been stylishly strolling along just moments before.
Each time I’ve talked to my sister since Christmas, I’ve asked if Wilfred is still Wilfred, thinking that maybe by now my niece had chosen a more suitable name like Dawn, Daphne or Donna. But Wilfred it is and Wilfred it will be, I’ll bet, until long after the doll’s arms and legs have fallen off and been lost.
And I’m not surprised or disappointed. After all, Wilfred is a heck of an improvement over the names Stephanie gave her two other dolls.
She called them Spookums The Waving Baby and Skeleton Bum.
