As an only child who lived a good distance away from her best friends, I spent many of my early years creating playmates for myself. However, the Christmas after I turned five, my grandmother brought me Cricket. Cricket wasn't a puppy, or a goldfish, or anything alive. She was simply a doll.
Dolls like Cricket aren't made anymore. She was nearly as tall as I (the box she came in was even bigger), with blonde hair and blue eyes. Her hair was neatly pulled up with pink yarn bows into pigtails of what I called "boing-boing curls" and her eyes were round like that of a "Precious Moments"…