Birthday Barbie

For my birthday last week, Spencer got delicious cupcakes with bright green icing that made our fingertips look like the Jolly Green Giant’s.
I thought back to my 8th birthday, when I received a Barbie doll.
I already had a “Babette”, a disappointing knock-off that could wear Barbie clothes, but was made of squishy, unnaturally pink plastic like dolls won at a carnival.
However, my birthday present was the real thing by Mattel, sturdy, substantial, and beautifully tan, the classic Barbie with a blond ponytail and black-and-white-striped swimsuit.
She came with a wire stand, and I stood her up on my dresser and admired her that night before I went to bed. I loved her pouty, red mouth and her tiny feet permanently molded to accept little plastic high-heeled shoes.
I was totally infatuated with my Barbie, but more than the doll itself, I was infatuated with ownership. The next day at school, just knowing that she was on my dresser made me feel good, and I rushed up to my room that afternoon to look at her.
Few possessions have given me that Barbie feeling since. I felt the same thrill when I first walked out the door with a cell phone in my purse, even though I had not particularly wanted one and only got it when it became a business necessity. The feeling came back when I took my perfect, white Mac iBook out of the perfect, white box. Most recently, I got the Barbie joy when I took my new Dahon folding bike for a spin.
What do these items have in common?
I had coveted the Barbie, the iBook, and the bike, but I hadn’t cared about the phone until I had it.
All are well made. All but the bike were practically required equipment to be a contemporary human being (although the laptop doesn't have to be a Mac; any brand will do, as long as you use it occasionally in a coffee shop), and even the bike has a certain up-to-the-minute cache. Bicycles skyrocketed in popularity when gasoline topped $4 per gallon two years ago, and the Dahon is billed as “personal transportation.” Its advertising depicts hip, unique people always on the go and always ready for anything.
Perhaps what gives me the Barbie thrill, then, is becoming part of the contemporary community of owners of a well-designed thing.