Oh, no… My secret is out. I am a doll collector. (Wait, wasn’t I supposed to claim they are “action figures” so that I can get away with being a man who, at the age of nearly 60, still plays with dolls?”) I got started down this dark path back in 1965 when my parents bought me a G.I. Joe sailor for my ninth birthday. It was the beginning of an addiction that has dogged me even down to this very day.
There are some things that just aren’t easy to admit to, like being gay, or being a socialist, or being a werewolf. Well, I am not gay and I am not a socialist, so don’t worry about that. Those are not really terrible things to be when it comes right down to it. I have friends that are gay, friends that are socialists, and friends that are… um… well, enough about those things. I am writing about the terrible scourge of doll collecting. In order to control such a rare and debilitating disease, I had to come up with a set of rules that would keep me from becoming a penniless hobo living in a cardboard refrigerator box in an alley with thousands of Barbie dolls. So let me explain the sacred rules that have kept me at least partially sane for almost fifty years.
Rule #1; Thou shalt only collect and obsess over twelve-inch dolls and action figures. That allows for literally thousands of choices to pursue, and rules out the many size variations like the three-inch G.I. Joe’s and the three-inch Star Wars figures and all the Mego eight-inch superheroes who were everywhere in the Seventies and Eighties, but now are rare and expensive.
Rule #2; Thou shalt not collect and obsess over dolls and figures that cost more than twenty dollars. This is the poverty prevention rule that keeps an obsession from breaking the bank and wreaking havoc throughout the rest of my life. I have only broken this rule on rare occasions for hard to acquire dolls or figures, and most of those were actually presents paid for by somebody else. I can blame the exceptions mostly on people who know about my weakness and exploit it for their own personal reasons… hopefully because they just like to make me happy.
Rule #3; Thou must seeketh the lost and forlorn doll and redeem it from destruction. Whenever I can, I look for dolls at Goodwill stores and yard sales. I have bought a ton of naked and sometimes broken Action Man, Barbie, Max Steel, Ken, and G.I. Joe dolls. I then try to find or make clothes for them. My daughter went through her Barbie period in a most destructive manner. She didn’t merely discard dolls and Disney princesses, she beheaded, dismembered, disrobed, and chewed them. I have rescued and repaired many of them, but only after securing her promise that she doesn’t want to play with them or eat them any longer. I should note, though, that I no longer acquire dolls in this way, now that she is middle school aged and wouldn’t be caught dead with a doll.
Rule #4; Thou shalt not let your daughter be the the only one who has fun pulling them apart, but you will put them back together again in ways that make them into something new.
So, these are the sacred rules of collecting which shall not be violated in the pursuit of this weird religion, the bringing together of a multitude of dolls.
That is my “Enterprise Collection” above. Specifically the “Original Series Enterprise Collection”. Look more closely.
Spock is holding a Vulcan harp-thingy (whose name I won’t quote here because I don’t want to seem too much like a Trekkie… and besides, I forgot what it is called and am too lazy to look it up again… What can I say? I’m old.) Kirk is wearing a Wrath of Khan movie uniform.
This green Barbie doll is a Goodwill rescue turned into a green Orion dancing girl with paint, sequins, material from a quilting project, and a hot glue gun. 
Uhura was the hardest member of the team to track down and acquire. After Kaybee Toys went out of business, I had to turn to the internet to get hold of this beauty. I also had to pay $24.
You may also have noticed that Sulu is missing from my Original Series set. Well, I’m still working on that one. But I do owe a debt to J.J. Abrams for making a new movie version of Star Trek and inspiring a new set of twelve inch dolls.
And let me not forget Rule #5, the most important rule… Thou shalt play with the dolls you collect.
Catch a Falling Star 
“Mickey, What’s Wrong With You?”
Yes, I am trying to answer that old question that old girlfriends used to ask me back when they were young and I was young and too stupid to answer honestly. You know, the question always asked right before they tell you, “Why don’t we just be friends and leave it at that.”
After having spent my Christmas money from Mom on an 18-inch giant gorilla action figure of Kong on Skull Island to terrorize all the dolls on the Barbie Shelf after midnight when all the dolls secretly come to life, I feel more prepared than ever before to answer that particular question.
I am not in my second childhood. I am still in my first one. Yes, I reached the ripe old age of 12 and then Peter Pan Syndrome set in bigtime. On the inside, I will always be 12 years old. I still, at 61, play games and play with toys. I never really grew up.
I am not a Brony, but I am still buying My Little Pony dolls, and can name all six of the main characters. From left to right, Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Apple Jack, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle. And yes, I have watched the cartoon show and like it, but am still not a Brony, okay? There are a lot of things wrong with me, but I am not that bad! My kids, however, are embarrassed to be seen with me when I am shopping for toys at Walmart, Toys-R-Us, or Goodwill.
I still play with the HO scale model trains that I have owned and collected since the first year I was actually twelve. I would love to get them running again. The Snowflake Special and the Toonerville Trolley seen in the picture both still ran the last time I tested them four years ago. I still love to paint buildings and HO scale people to live in my little train town. I am still working on a set of townspeople that I bought back in 1994. German villagers circa 1880.
I have always been fascinated by imaginary places and the people who live in them. Especially imaginary places in the fiction of the past. Places like the castle of Minas Tirith in the realm of Gondor in Middle Earth, and like Pellucidar that David Innes and Abner Perry discovered at the Earth’s Core in their boring machine called “the Prospector”as part of the Pellucidar series created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan novels. So, another thing wrong with me is that I live mostly in the past and entirely in the worlds of my imagination. I have very little to do with the so-called “real world”.
So, to sum up, the things wrong with Mickey are; A. He’s a goofy old child. B. He still plays with toys. C. He likes girly stuff. D. He confuses fantasy with reality. No wonder the girls used to run away screaming. And I haven’t even added the part about Mickey thinking he is a nudist now and walking around the house naked when no one else is home and forced to see the full horror of it.
But maybe you should think on it for a moment more. What if the things that are wrong with Mickey are actually good things? What if he’s found the secret to long life and happiness in spite of a world full of troubles and illnesses and blechy stuff? It could be true…
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