(Off usual topic in response to Cat's recent challenge) 

I don't remember on which of the eight days of Hanukkah I got my Raggedy Ann.  I only remember that she was instantly my favorite gift ever.  She was more lovable than Barbie, the perfect combination of stuffed animal and doll.  For several years I slept with her, read stories to her, and periodically undid her dress to stare at the little heart emblazoned on her chest that meant she truly loved me even though she was made from cloth. 

This, of course, is back in the early 60's, a time when Sheaffer "cartridge pens" were popular.  My big sister (five years my senior), had just entered junior high, and in a stunning act of recycling savvy long before its time, decided she could reuse her cartridges by filling them from a bottle of ink.  My pediatrician's office was happy to supply her with a syringe and needle with which to pull up the ink from the bottle and squirt into the plastic cartridge.  (Imagine a doctor's office doing that today!)   And her favorite color of ink:  peacock blue.  That gorgeous cobalt blended with just enough green to render it out of the ordinary.  It was all very noble indeed. 

 Until that one fateful day when I was off at a birthday party, and my sister and her friend, out of boredom I suppose, decided that possession of a syringe meant they could play quite a realistic game of "doctor."  The patient?  Why, who better than Raggedy Ann?  I'll never quite understand what ran through my sister's head.  I only know that when I returned home late that Saturday afternoon, I was met by my mother at the door.  I knew that look on her face.  It was the same look she had when we had to give away my cat because of my brother's allergies - that "I don't know how to break this to you" look.

 Apparently, my sister and her friend had decided it was "injection day" at the doctor's office, and they shot up my poor unsuspecting Raggedy Ann's head with ink!   Her head instantly absorbed the color and it spread throughout her head, rendering her entire face peacock blue.  My mother, in a well-intentioned effort to save Raggedy Ann before I arrived home, did the only thing she could.  She threw the doll into the washing machine.   By the time I walked in the door, not only was Raggedy Ann one of the first dolls "of color" (albeit blue), but she was bald as well, as her beautiful head of red yarn hair had fallen off in the washing machine.

 Okay, I'm laughing hysterically now as I type this, but as a 7 year old, I was grief-stricken, heart-broken, positively inconsolable.  And furious with my sister, who up until then had been my idol and role model.

My family did not have much money.  A bald, blue-faced Raggedy Ann was not easily replaced.  But when the next Hanukkah came round, there among the wrapped gifts was a beautiful box containing my new doll.  She was not exactly the same, mind you.  The print cloth of her dress was different and I felt a bit disloyal to my first doll, but eventually I adjusted as children do.  The new Raggedy Ann, along with her partner, Raggedy Andy (a later gift), sit behind me as I type, nearly 50 years later, they are still my smiling friends. 

I love my sister anyway, despite the Raggedy Ann debacle.  And we all must give her credit for creating what was probably the first doll "of color."  Sadly, I don't know any ethnicity that can relate to peacock blue.