My Skipper was a soap star, how 'bout yours?

Today, on Sirius 90s on 9 (my new absolute favorite radio station, shout-out and thanks to my dad, who will hopefully never read this blog, for getting me 6 more months of listening pleasure) I heard that controversial hit from 1997, Aqua's "Barbie Girl." Every time I hear that song, which has been about twice in the last 6 months thanks to the aforementioned 90s on 9, I go back to a simpler time. Not junior high, because let's be honest, those three years were a bitch. No, I'm talking way back. Back to when I actually played with Barbies, Kens and Skippers.

I had probably around 12 Barbies, but only 2 Skippers and 2 Kens. Every Barbie needed a Ken, which meant that each Ken had to do sextuple duty. When I busted out all my Barbie loot, I was very careful to maintain completely separate story lines for each Barbie/Ken pairing. I'd like to say my young mind was subconsciously thinking metaphysical thoughts and I saw every Barbie as an extension of all the others but it probably had more to do with my early affinity for following daytime TV. At any rate, even though my Kens had to fill the role of boyfriend/husband for multiple Barbies, there was never any jealousy amongst the bevy of buxom blondes. Ken was never seen as so much as a two-timer, much less a six-timer. It was like they all knew they were just actors on the stage of my imagination.

Now, I firmly believe that the story line I am about to relate came about as a direct result of watching too many soap operas with my Nana. I spent all day every Monday-Friday with her until I started kindergarten, and then I spent the summer weekdays with her. My Nana was my absolute favorite person in the world. She taught me lots of things, like if you make your oatmeal with milk and loads of sugar, it's actually quite delicious. She also introduced me to soap operas. Every day, from noon to 3, we watched "our shows": Days of Our Lives (going strong since 1965), Another World and Santa Barbara. Oh, the drama! The love affairs! The scandal! The cat fights! The people dying horrible, fiery deaths and then mysteriously reappearing years later! The way women always went to bed and woke up with alarmingly perfect hair and make-up!

(I admit, somewhat shamefully, that I occasionally still tune in to Days of Our Lives just to see if my favorite Salem-ites are still alive, whether they have some sort of soap opera amnesia and whether their unrequited love has been requited. Also, I love trying to figure out if Sami Brady is in good-girl or bad-girl phase.)

Anywhooo, my most memorable (i.e. the one that horrified my mother and so I actually remember it) Barbie saga involved a love triangle between Barbie, Ken and Skipper. Now, I always assumed Barbie and Ken were in their mid-to-late twenties. I didn't really think about Skipper's age, I just knew she was slightly younger than Barbie based on the fact that she was shorter and had smaller boobs. I would like to stress that I did not grasp that Skipper was apparently intended to be between the ages of 13 and 15. Anyway, everybody knows Barbie and Ken are a supercouple, just like Bo and Hope. Anyone who knows their daytime soaps knows that a couple doesn't achieve supercouple status without their share of strife and scandal. So I created a little real-life (and by that I mean entirely soap-opera-based) drama for Barbie and Ken. Enter Skipper.

Apparently Barbie, with all her blonde, big-boobed, tiny-waisted bombshellness, wasn't enough for Ken. In his defense, I've always thought Barbie must be a lot to handle. I mean, who looks that good all the time, no matter how you butcher her hair or mis-match her outfits. Keeping that perfect tan and always being bikini ready must take a lot of effort, so I'm gonna go ahead and say Barbie's high maintenance. Plus, imagine how hard Ken must have to work to afford not just all the dream homes and cars, but the education for Barbie's many job changes over the years. She's as schizophrenic when it comes to her career as I am.

Point is, I guess Ken needed a break from all that hotness and all that hot pink. To tell the truth, I never really thought about Ken's motivation until just now, I just knew Barbie and Ken were epic, and since most of my knowledge of love and marriage was, at this point, informed by the aforementioned, I knew Dance Club Barbie and Animal Lovin' Ken needed some daytime-style drama if their relationship was going to survive. Skipper was the obvious choice. Cute, bubbly, and slightly more au naturale than her big sister, she was a refreshing change. (Of course, if I had realized at the time she was jail-bait it would have been even more awesome...) Too bad for Ken and Skipper, my 8-year-old self didn't know about contraception. That's right folks, my Beach Blast Skipper got knocked up. Luckily for Skipper, her clothes weren't as tight-fitting as Barbie's, so no one noticed the baby bump (cleverly crafted from bits of torn Kleenex) for a while.

To my way of thinking, the only thing more scandalous than a Ken-and-Skipper-love-child was five love-children. Luckily, I also happened to be the proud owner of Quints, the cute little set of quintuplets that pre-dated, or perhaps foreshadowed, America's obsession with multiple births and unreasonable numbers of children. I guess since Barbie didn't want to sacrifice her 36-18-33 figure or her constantly morphing professional life to have kids, Ken figured that when he got the chance to spread his seed he better do it up right. At any rate, soon Skipper's bump grew to mammouth proportions. Eventually, my poor mom noticed.

I was a pretty quiet kid, content to hole up in my room for hours on end reading books or acting out my elaborate doll-dramas. Mom would occasionally come upstairs just to check on me, as she did on this occasion. I can't recall the exact details of my mom's discovering the sordid details of my active imagination, but I imagine that she had to have heard a bit of my improvised character dialogue as she walked up the stairs and down the hall, which may have gone something like this:

Barbie: I can't believe you would cheat on me! And with my little sister!

Ken: I'm so sorry, Barbie, I love you, really I do. But it just happened.

Skipper: But Ken! I'm pregnant with your children! You said you loved ME!

Ken: Sorry babe. Barbie's the love of my life. I just bought her a hot pink Corvette convertible to prove it to her.

Barbie: Oh, Ken! I love hot pink Corvette convertibles! Let's go for a ride down to my 50's-style drive-in!

Skipper: But what am I supposed to do? I'm having five babies! And they're all yours!

Ken: Don't worry babe, I'll pay child support.

(Barbie and Ken ride off in hot pink Corvette convertible, heading to the drive-in then back to their dream house. Meanwhile, Skipper is left all alone in Barbie's (pink) RV where she has been living for the last few months.)

Cue real-life mom: (worriedly) Honey, what are you doing?

Young Liz: (innocently) Playing with my Barbies.

Mom: What have your Barbies been up to lately?

Liz: (matter-of-factly) Ken had an affair with Skipper. But it's ok, Barbie forgave him because he bought her a Corvette.

Mom: (cautiously) Well, that's good, I guess. But what's under Skipper's dress?

Liz: Kleenex. I had to make her pregnant because she's accidentally going to have five of Ken's babies.

Mom: Elizabeth, why is Skipper going to have Ken's babies?

Liz: Because she had an affair with Ken.

Mom: But why did they have an affair?

Liz: Because Skipper liked Ken, even though he likes Barbie. Then Ken and Barbie had a fight and Ken thought he might like Skipper better. But then she got pregnant and he decided he really liked Barbie after all.

Mom: (clearly concerned about the fact that this all makes so much sense to her daughter) How on earth did you come up with that?

Liz: (patiently explaining to mother who clearly has no idea about the ways of the world) It happens all the time on mine and Nana's shows. Except sometimes on those people have affairs because they think their wife is dead when she's really not.

Like I said, I can't recall the exact conversation my mom and I had, but subsequent discussions (when I was old enough to actually properly discuss such themes) reveal that my mom was confused/concerned/horrified over Skipper's pregnant state and my thinking it was weird that she didn't understand that stuff like that just happens. I think at this point my mom tried pretty hard to convince me to forego this storyline and have some of my Barbies go on a camping trip with the Kens and a non-pregnant Skipper. Of course, I would have had none of that because I had big plans for Skipper and those quints. Also, I figured at the very least, Skipper could convince Barbie to have pity on her/not want Skipper to tell the whole town that Ken was her baby-daddy and give her the fold-and-go cottage, and maybe the RV for keeps. After all, Skipper would need something a lot bigger than a hot pink Corvette convertible to haul all of Ken's babies around...