Window Shopping
The turkey’s been eaten, your black eye’s healing from that deceptively angelic looking grandma beating your ass for the last Zhu Zhu pet on Black Friday, and your Christmas tree is bright and shiny in your living room. It’s officially holiday time!
In the big city, nothing says holidays quite like elaborately dressed department store windows. A few weeks ago, I came across this awesome one:
I wish I could have snagged a better shot of the whole giant thing so you could truly appreciate it. This is the conversation I imagine would take place upon seeing this window:
Girl: Mommy, mommy, it’s Barbie and Ken!
Mom: Wow, you’re right it is! It’s…huh.
Girl: What?
Mom: (tilting head) Um. Nothing.
See, despite the sheer brilliance in creating this ode to childhood (and holy cow, hats off to you, nameless decorator), something was bugging me about it. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I passed it about ten more times, noticing something new each time that made me, with my warped imagination, smile.
And the following entirely fictional, adults only conversation resulted.
Barbie: …can you believe she had the nerve to say that to my face? And after all I did for Skipper, practically raising her as my own all these years. Working as a pediatrician so she’d have free healthcare. That stint as a vet so she could have horse riding lessons. Spending ’85 in that horrid peaches and cream ball gown so the Peach Mafia out of Savannah would leave us be. All those littlest pet shop creatures I let her keep. That thankless little biotch.
Barbie: And the worst part of it all is that Midge took her side! I was the bridesmaid in her wedding, and she couldn’t even stick up for me. You know what I think? I think she’s jealous. Brunettes just aren’t as popular as us blonde dolls. Don’t you agree, Snookie Wookie?
Barbie: Ken? Don’t you agree?
Ken: You really want to know what I think?
Barbie: Of course, snookums.
Ken: No you don’t. You never want to know what I think.
Barbie: Ken! Whatever gave you such an idea…
Ken: You! You gave me that idea! Of course I believe you don’t have any friends! I can barely stand to look at you!
Barbie: (gasps) How dare you?
Ken: How dare I what? How dare I finally open my mouth after decades of living amongst your insanity?
Barbie: I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
Ken: You don’t, huh? Why don’t we start with your deep seated narcissism? I could forgive the pictures of yourself everywhere. But honest to God, that chandelier…
Barbie: What’s wrong with it?
Ken: Are you shittin’ me, B? The way those dolls are hanging down like that…
Ken: Sometimes, when I’m walking under it, I feel a little shoe thump me on the head. It’s like they’re silently screaming for help.
Barbie: Oh pooh! Just because I like to decorate–
Ken: And what about the tree, B?
Barbie: …
Ken: Where are the ornaments?
Barbie: (mumbles)
Ken: What? I couldn’t hear you. Where are the fucking ornaments?
Barbie: On the ground.
Ken: That’s right. And why are they on the ground? I’ll tell you why. Because you had to rip them down before I came home to put up your decorations.
Ken: I mean, look at the way their arms are reaching out for mercy. Have you no pity, woman?
Barbie: I…I can’t help it, Ken. I just like to look at myself.
Ken: Then why did you stab that picture of yourself in the face???
Ken: That is some messed up shit right there.
Barbie: (sobbing on her knees amidst broken glass ornaments) I’m so sorry, Ken. So, so sorry. But to be fair, you’re the one who flaunts pictures of your mistress everywhere.
Ken: My…seriously? Fucking seriously? Barbie, that’s a picture of yourself from the 70′s in black face. I told you when you put it up that it was deeply offensive.
Barbie: Oh. Really?
Ken: I’m calling your psychiatrist. First though…
Barbie: You want to kiss me and carry me off to live in the Waikiki Dream Mansion?
Ken: No. I want to tell you that I hate the color pink.
Barbie: Fuck you. Fuck you and your hairless chesticles.
Ken: Come on. Pink socks? You may as well strip my manhood away completely.
Barbie: I don’t think it was the pink that stripped your manhood away, you bastard.
Ken: …Oh. Oh no you didn’t. No you di-n’t just throw that in my face.
Barbie: It’s been in my face for years, Flat-Crotch.
Ken: You know I can’t help what the manufacturers didn’t give me! That does it. I’m going to see you committed if it’s the last thing I do. (Picks up phone)
Barbie: (withdraws pink revolver from her pink clutch) Darling?
::single gunshot::
Barbie: (crooning to dolls in chandelier) You’ll never leave me, will you my pretties? You like pink. You like us. Never, ever leave…
Ken: That’s a toy gun from your stint as a cowgirl, B.
Barbie: Son of a bitch!
Fin.
OMG, I’m dying over here. Seriously, I can’t breathe because I’m laughing so hard. I’ve hated Barbie for YEARS (I blame my mother, who still plays Barbie dress up with my daughter), and this was the most PERFECT imaginary scene ever!
Also… I love the way your mind works (esp. with the very end – the fake gun, ROFL).
There’s something wrong with that Christmas tree…
…
…oh, I got it. The tree’s white. And that’s wrong.
Btw, I suspected their relationship would end badly.
@MamaKitty
Honestly? I originally ended it with a real gun. However, I felt that really wasn’t in the holiday spirit, you know?
Thank you for laughing at me. With me. Laughing with me.
@Keith Melton
I think we were all just waiting for it to go kablooey.
@Alisha Rai
I suggested we decorate our GREEN tree with barbies, and while my daughter would love it, the wife brought down the hammer, alas.
@Keith Melton
Did you show your daughter the utterly creepy result of hanging barbies on a tree? Minus my editorializing, of course, as Auntie Alisha will NOT be held responsible for teaching little Melton F-bombs.
She’d be like: “Daddy, can I hang barbies from my light, too?”
And I would say: “No, sweetheart. Because the barbie hair will catch on fire.”
And my son would say: “Cool!”
@Keith Melton
And the next thing you know, your son is a pyro. Gotcha.
By the bye, did you catch my tribute to Vance’s…chesticles? By using the word…chesticles?!
@alisha rai
Did you notice how completely I ignored your use of that word?
LMAO!! This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read!
@Keith Melton
Did you notice how I ignored you ignoring my use of that word? I know, it’s a little meta.
@Jen D.
Why thank you kindly, ma’am! *bows*
Please, please, please tell me that wasn’t a real window display. . .
My mother is still angry with me because I refused to play with Barbie. And that’s so many years ago that it’s well, never mind.
Pink. Does Vivian know about the pink?
@Milinda
Not even I could make up something so wonderful. I like to think that the window decorator just started to have fun at some point and see how much weird stuff she could get away with…nothing else can account for the stabbed in the face picture, right? Or the utterly pissed off expression on Ken’s face?