A Doll House

I don't remember the exact moment I wanted one, or when I stopped wanting one, but for a few months leading up to my 11th Birthday, I desperately wanted a doll house. Looking back at my life, 12 birthdays later, I can safely say that that doll house was the only demand my parents could not fulfill. I could blame my obsessive desire for a doll house on my expensive school which was full of rich kids. While we were never poor, and I never lacked anything and I knew I could not have everything my rich friends talked about, a doll house just had this impact on me.

So I had this friend who used to invite us to her house every weekend. An oven was an luxury item then, and a bread topped with melted cheese was the most delicious thing you could ever eat. So we went to her house every weekend, to eat the bread pizza and to play with her pink Barbie doll house. I had many dolls and stuffed toys of my own but never a Barbie. I thought dolls are dolls, and Barbie looks like just the other Chinese dolls you can get so cheaply. But it was like one of those cases in which when you have the taste of something newer, something better, something expensive, you can never look at the old cheaper thing again in the same light, you are bound to make a comparison and crave for the better newer thing. So it is only understandable that I would want to own better stuffs, not just a branded doll, but the whole Doll House, to play with whenever I wanted, to call them my own and may be even invite my friends over to play with.

I do not remember asking my parents for it, I do not remember if they told me or if my grandmother conveyed it to me, I just remember what happened next. My parents went looking to buy one for me, without knowing the price, without realizing how big it was, and after learning the truth about it, concluded that we could not afford it. I do not remember how I felt about it, probably heartbroken then. I remember in a desperate moment of longing asking one of my friends to give me their doll house as a birthday present and I remember a few weeks later her telling me that her doll house had gotten stolen so she could not give it to me or she would. Of course looking back at it, it embarrasses me now. And now I realise what an absolute waste of time and money that would have been. 

Instead my mother brought me books and lots of them. I remember that I owned the best story books and I was the object of everybody's envy when it came to books. I developed a habit of reading at an early age and in many ways I am glad I did. I topped all my English exams, I won certificates in every essay and story writing competitions and looking back I wonder if things would have been different if I had one doll house to play with.