At the age of 8, my three favorite activities were:

1. driving my car (which was actually a bookcase with a cardboard steering wheel taped to it)
2. to a "French Lady" tea party with my sister (where all conversation was spoken with some kind of fru-fru accent)
3. and then back in the car to my office where I shuffled papers, filled in some outdated, discarded forms we salvaged from a Dumpster somewhere, and sent and received mail with my sisters who were in their offices, for hours on end.

Playing with dolls was not a major occupation. I was a career girl!

That year for my birthday, I got a baby doll (the kind with the big bald plastic head) from my aunt back east who didn't know me at all.

Eerily foreign, I didn't know what to do with it.

Should I take it in the car to my tea party and to the office?

A baby had no place in my life.