20

2/11/08

2/4/09
D is for Dollhouses

If the rooms hadn't been quite so small, the whole thing might have been a little more structurally sound. Mostly we just sat on opposite sides of the living room and glared at each other, because we weren't absolutely certain that the stairs would hold our weight, and climbing rickety stairs was the only way to get to any of the other rooms.

Neither of us was willing to be the first one to try the stairs. That was the problem, or at least half of it. Neither of us had the guts, the balls, the gall to take that initiative. Or maybe it was that we didn't recognize the problem until fixing it wouldn't have done anything, anyway.



And God damn dollhouses, because they aren't made for real people. Because real people aren't made to be dolls. And my couch was made out of plastic and your chair was made out of plastic, so I suppose you could say we were stuck between a hard place and a hard place, and the only way to go was towards each other.

There are only two things that can happen when two people are stuck together so stubbornly: they can learn to love each other, or they can come to despise each other. We chose the latter. It was easier, in the short run.

But the children grew up, and didn't need dolls anymore, so we just sat and stared and loathed.

And between a hard place and a hard place we loathed and never bothered to fix the problem we barely recognized and never climbed the stairs.

And so we squandered our plastic lives.