Donna (US)

My sisters are 11 and 7 years older than I am, they were born in '56 & '60 respectively. I was born in '67 so I was just a little too young for Dawn when she was first out. My sister that is 7 years older was an avid Dawn doll fan at the time. She had around a dozen dolls with lots of the fashions. Fancy Feet was my favorite. My mother had a theory that we girls could share our toys just as I got their hand-me-down clothes. Sharing was okay, but at the end of the day, it was understood that ALL the Dawn dolls belonged to my sister Gayla, I was only "borrowing" them. Every day my sister would go off to school and I would sneak into her room and "borrow" her dolls. I would have been three or four at the time. Every night, our mother would come in and take them back to her room with the admonishment that I should take them back myself. The next day would begin the cycle all over again. This went on for years, until my sister moved out when I was 10, taking her dolls with her. Several years ago I began my own Dawn doll collection, now numbering in the hundreds. My sister still has her original dolls in a box, and every year she torments me with the possibility that I might get them as a Christmas present. (That's okay, I am sure that I deserve the torment.) Still no dolls from her, but it does make me smile when I remember those times tottering on a chair in her closet with a yardstick desperate to get her box of Dawn's off the top shelf.