the doll games
shelley and pamela jackson

Pamela: Well it seems like rather than dolls your fantasy life mostly revolved around those games you played, those fantasy games.

Anthony: Yeah, but that was later, though. That wasn't until around 6th or 7th grade.

So up until then did you have some other way that you were making up stories? Were they more in your head?

Yeah, in my head some, and I think actually I used some of the dolls for making up stories. The micronauts and...

So you did make up some more elaborate stories with those characters.

I think so. I don't remember anything about what I made up though.

We don't remember our plots that well either. We remember there were certain genres like pirate ships–

Yeah, pirate ships were a very important one. I remember this important book called Jade.

Yes! Was that important to you too? We were just talking about how that was a model for our pirate ship games.

Yes, it was definitely the model for pirates. I think I might have played Robin Hood stories too, using the medieval knights set.

Yeah, you were into Robin Hood. I actually had a Will Scarlet doll. Do you remember that?

Yeah I do. I think you had Will Scarlet and I might have had little John. And maybe others.

If so they never made it into our doll games. Well, in fact Will Scarlet didn't either. He never really made it as a character, for some reason. Even though he had nice tights you could take off. Did he have an arm that went up and down? Who had the action guy arms that went up and down?

Captain Pegleg. And maybe someone else.

I always thought big Josh did, but–

No.

No, we must have checked.

I think it's Captain Pegleg. I remember Captain Pegleg. I thought it was cool that you could take a boot and put it over his peg leg and then he didn't have a peg leg anymore.

So were we still playing with Captain Pegleg when you started playing with him, or was this later?

I think that there might have been some overlap. I don't remember for sure but I think you were still playing.

So did you go in and rummage through our–I don't remember where the dolls were. Where were they?

I think they were in Shelley's closet in a box.

So you would go in and get Captain Pegleg out?

Yeah. Or other dolls.

Did we know? Were you not supposed to? Was it furtive?

It might have been. [Laughter] There were all sorts of things I had to go into Shelley's room to get out which were sort of furtive. All the best books were in there too.

I know. So you'd get Captain Pegleg and all his accessories out, his daggers and things?

Yeah.

Would you just play with him by himself?

No, I actually think I played around with a bunch of them, becauseI think it was at the same time that I was taking the B***** doll and going, "Now how do I make these legs work?" and I'd try to turn the torso around to make them so that the knees were actually ankles.

Yeah, I did that too. So like you could pretend that the stumps were actually feet, sort of.

[laughter]

Sadly it did not work.

No.

Anthony Jackson, the younger brother of Shelley and Pamela, is a thirty-two year old computer programmer who lives in Berkeley, California.