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tissue through three different locations before finally catching it stowing away on the bottom of my shoe.

I'm not exceptionally intelligent. When I was six, I broke my left arm sliding on the hardwood floor in our living room-I had greased the bottoms of my socks with baby oil for a better slide. A week later, I went outside with my brand new roller skates and got a matching cast for my right arm. When I was a senior in college, I tripped while jay-walking across a five-lane highway during rush hour. I narrowly missed being a hood ornament on someone's car. (I wouldn't swear to it, but I'm almost positive it was a pink Corvette.)

So you see, I can't help but hate Barbie. She is everything that I will never be. Somehow that little scrap of plastic fell in with the right people and started setting standards about womanhood and fashion and before I knew it, I was a flaw living in a perfect world.

Of course I like to think, with my resume, I've at least learned not to take myself so seriously. I like to think I've learned to laugh with everyone else when I trip over the big nothing in the carpet, and not to be bothered when I look in the mirror at the end of the day and discover that I have been sporting a spinach-green slipcover over my right front tooth since lunch. I like to think that perhaps I have learned to be understanding of the shortcomings of others with so many to my own credit. I like to think I have grown accustomed to flopping and failing and making messes. But I must admit that there are days, every now and then, when the only thing that gets me through is remembering that Barbie is just plastic.

Plastic melts.

Learn more about this author, Kari Birchler.
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