Circles of Hell 4: Polly Pockets

Know what Polly Pockets are? If you are a small girl, or parent or relative of a small girl, I bet you are more than well acquainted with the diminutive perky plastic bimbette -- to your cost!

For those who don't know, Polly Pockets is a tiny doll about two to three inches tall, made of hard plastic. She has an oversize head with a perky ponytail (also hard plastic) and she comes with soft rubber clothes and hard plastic accessories.

Sounds kinky, doesn't it?

The soft rubber clothes are molded in one piece with a strategic slit in the back - a doll's version of the special clothing made to dress corpses in coffins. Dressing Polly is not unlike dressing a corpse. You have to pull, twist and manipulate tiny pieces of rubber. It isn't easy. It isn't easy for the Princess' tiny four-year-old fingers, and it definitely isn't easy for my middle-aged sausage digits. As soon as she is dressed (and the clothes are truly horrible colors and shapes), the Princess rips the outfit off and starts wrestling with another.

This may not sound too bad to you, but remember the doll is only two to three inches high. Imagine the shoes. Imagine the rubber blouses. Imagine the teeny tiny hard plastic accessories. Everything is tiny and ends up scattered across a wide area. I've found odd pieces in the dog bed, under the sofa, between sofa cushions, in shoes, in cups, in the cat food, and I think I saw the Princess "mailing" some through a heating duct.

I used to hate the small pieces of Lego that I inevitably stepped on with bare feet first thing in the morning, but now I hate Polly Pocket more with a pure heart. She and all her accessories should be flung into outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. As I can't conjure up a fate of biblical proportions for her, I lie in wait with the vacuum cleaner.

Whoops! Take that Polly's shoes, bag, vile rubber blouse! You may not be biodegradable, and you may last for ever, but sucking you into a swirling mess of dust and dog hair is extremely satisfying.

Now, all I have to do is make some excuse to the Princess...