Debbie Does Dolls

Originally posted: 11/21/2008
No time for much in the way of posting issues. I'm getting ready for the big doll show! Happily this is much more professional than the flea market, there shouldn't be any exposed body parts, I hope...after all, it's held in a very conservative city, I don't think they believe in belly buttons and ass crack. There are always characters that we have to contend with, believe me. What my mom and I have noticed in the doll world is that in order to be a doll dealer, you should be named Debbie, or some form of Deborah/Debra. It's so strange, there are tons of them. If there is a doll dealer that we don't know their name we can safely guess Debbie and be correct about 25% of the time. We have to come up with a code for all the Debbies in order to keep them straight. We have Debbie, DeBRA, Little Debbie, Debbie Pookie, DebbiesCrafts.....you get the idea. We meet a lot of people at shows every year. Sometimes it's hard to remember names. We have to have nicknames for people though so that we can talk about going to see them or calling them, since we either may not know names or have forgotten them with only seeing these people once a year sometimes. For example. there are two women that are dealers from out of state, they happen to look very similar, though they're just friends. They are "Faux Sisters". There is also a pair of very experienced dealers that are sisters, so they're just "The Sisters". There's also, "The Old Ones", "Odd Mom", "Big Hair G", "Grey Braid", "Dotdoll", and so many more. For antique shows we even have to have more because there are regular dealers as well. There is one guy who has blue stars tatooed straight across his forehead and on his arms....it's a good look especially when coupled with his dreadlocks and strong body odor. We named him StarSunMoon. Star for short, as in, "I need to go up on the north end by Star's booth in order to see if Weird One is here yet". Does this give you an inkling of why I want to do this for a living? I mean, how could I live a full and happy life without knowing people like StarSunMoon, Faux Sisters, and Grey Braid. For sure it couldn't be done.