The house on Cherry Court was so close to McDonald’s that you could hear every order being repeated at the drive-through in crackly static. It was so perfectly under the flight path of planes from O’Hare that you could see the passengers through the windows; and I’d find frozen blue goop in my backyard. It was so close to the neighbor’s fish smoker that our tiny backyard smelled like a dock.

But at the time it was paradise.

On the back deck, which was built barely above the old flagstones, the acorns and the cicada husks gathered as they fell from the tall oaks. Katie and I collected them into sand pails already half-filled with rainwater and made “soup.” We called the cicada husks “chickens”, and we hunted around the backyard for anything unusual but organic to add to the concoction. Then we sat together in the tiny sandbox and enjoyed our paradise.

Often, the meals were attended by Katie’s Barbie dolls; the most beloved of which was the one and only Elizabeth Freckly Dawn Ron.

Elizabeth Freckly Dawn Ron came into our lives when Katie was four years old.   She was a plain-old Barbie; but she was special because she was one of the first.   She was probably a gift from a relative, born from the aisles at Toys R Us on the busy intersection just past the McDonald’s.   But in her blue and brown dress and shiny blond hair, she made a dazzling girlfriend for plastic-haired Ken.

Then one afternoon, while I was at work, Katie found an indelible magic marker and decided to draw on herself – and on Barbie.   When I came home, Katie was crying. She and Barbie both had black magic marker spots on their arms and faces.   Julie couldn’t wash the spots away.   They would disappear in a few days from Katie, but Barbie would have hers forever.

I offered a new Barbie, but that didn’t stop the tears. I thought the dots kind of looked like freckles, so I said that they made her prettier.   To this day, I have no idea where the name came from – it just popped into my head like someone had whispered it to me.   I said her new name was Elizabeth Freckly Dawn Ron.   We decided that Barbie liked her new freckles. And oddly, that seemed to make things better.

Katie and freckled Barbie became even closer. And Dawn Ron began acquiring her funny persona.

In the small pine-paneled family room, we’d sit on the floor next to the couch and line up all of the Barbies for elaborate fashion shows.   The best outfits were always given to Dawn Ron.   She was the leader of the group, organizing and judging the fashion shows, deciding the rules, and always declaring herself the winner.

And it was endlessly funny.   Her hair was often tangled and her clothes disheveled.   She would go off to an imaginary bathroom and come back unknowingly half-dressed.   She would always give silly but confident answers to the fashion show judges.

The other Barbies knew she was the favorite, and they were jealous. They whispered behind her back but Dawn Ron never caught on.

One night, the Barbies hosted an Olympic skating event.   The Barbies performed jumps and spins while we sang the background music. One of the contestants was Kristi Yamaguchi.   She was awesome – and her performance was flawless.   Then Dawn Ron emerged onto the ice in her blue and brown dress and her wild hair.   She missed her jumps and her dress was on wrong.   But she was proud of her performance and cried melodramatically when she finished.   Still, there was no doubt that Kristi was the winner.

But the judges somehow got their scores mixed up and Elizabeth Freckly Dawn Ron was awarded the Gold Medal.   Kristi Yamaguchi won the silver with grace and we sang the national anthem for both of them.   The other Barbies stood by the couch in stunned disbelief.   But that gold medal cemented Dawn Ron’s confidence forever.

We laughed until we cried.   And we talk about it now almost twenty years years later – and laugh some more.    In fact, we’ve recreated that same skating performance several times for the younger nieces and their Barbies; me as a grown man and Katie in high school or college.

To this day, when I see or hear Kristi Yamaguchi, I think about Dawn Ron and that skating event.   I’ll call Katie and say, “Hey, I just heard Kristi Yamaguchi and I was thinking about you.”   She knows what I mean. I'm thinking about how much we both love those memories.

And about that magic marker that really was.

#childhood neighborhood

Elizabeth Freckly Dawn Ron