Demanding dolls

One of the things I love about our neighborhood is that there are children here.   Lots and lots of them, of every size and attitude.   Shoals of them, migrating herds of them, like the wildebeest on the Serengeti.  

If you walk down Via Garibaldi at around 6 on a summer evening, you will realize that this is one corner of Italy in which the word “birthrate” isn’t associated with “falling.”

But  an unusually perceptive person would already have known all  that from the scene  I noticed  outside one of the tobacco/candy/lottery ticket/toy stores  here.

img_7636-doll-strollers

What these three alarmingly pink doll-size strollers  reveal is:

  • That there are little girls living nearby.  
  • That there are lots of them, enough  to create an important market for toys, especially those  designed for  little girls, a market that requires  serious  inventory.
  • That  they are extremely demanding customers, who require choice in the products they insist their relatives buy them, whichever relative has recently shown a weak spot that can be exploited.
  • That  any color is good, as long as it’s  pink.  

I hope I’m here when they grow up, I really want to see how they dress.

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2 Comments

  1. Oh, my dear. I do love reading about your neighborhood. I remember all the children out in Via Garibaldi in the evening – it was almost hazardous, but so much fun.

    1. The only thing more hazardous than the kids are their parents (more on that later) — no, I mean the kids on bikes. And skates, and skateboards, and pushing and pulling things, like their dogs or their siblings. They get extra points for doing both simultaneously.

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