Ping

At a garage sale recently, I saw a box of old Barbie dolls. There were half a dozen dolls in a box, and they reminded me of a time before I transitioned when I was still a girl.

My best friend, Mikey, has brought over his newest toy, a slingshot made by the Wham-O slingshot company. He is super proud of it, as his parents don't buy him many new toys. He rushed over to show it to me right away.

The handle is made of wood and has black rubber around it so that when you grip it tightly, it won't slip out of your hand. The last thing you want is a slippery slingshot. If there were an event in the Olympics for slingshotting, and we were old enough to be in it, we would win gold for sure. We can hit small targets from long distances. We use all sorts of targets, cans, and bottles once — because cleaning up the glass proved to be more trouble than it was worth — sticks, quart baskets, and tennis balls.

I looked around the yard for some targets but could find none, so I went to the garbage can in the garage and got out two Barbie dolls I'd thrown out a few days before when I found out girls can't play in the NHL, and I got mad. I grab my homemade slingshot off the bench in the garage too. "Let's use these," I say, holding the Barbies in the air. I walk the length of the backyard and place the Barbies at the other horseshoe pit.

I lean both of the dolls against the metal stake. The dolls are shabbily attired and have the same plastic expressions as though they have recently walked into a ballroom. If they had any brains to think about such things, they would understand this is not going to be the beauty pageant they were imagining.

The doll on the left has long blonde hair, messy and unbrushed but still recognizable as a girl's hair. The one on the right has no hair left on one side of her head. She looks like a boy with boobs. Slightly more than half of her scalp is showing, and when you look closely enough, you can see the small holes in her head where the fake hair emerges from the underside where her brain would be if she had one.

I can still see the tiny scratches under her breasts that I made with my pocket knife a few weeks ago. I wanted to turn Barbie into a boy. I didn't get very far; you'd be amazed how tough a Barbie's plastic body can be; it is immune to alteration.

Mikey and I position ourselves in front of the abandoned cars in the dirt at one end of the horseshoe pit and aim down the court. We have each collected a pocket full of adequately-sized rocks, and we prepare to fire.

Mikey goes first. He puts a rock in the small leather pocket of the slingshot, puts his right foot in front of his left, and pulls the rubber band back with his right hand. He closes one eye and cocks his head to the left. His right arm shakes with concentration. He lets go of the rock, and it lands past both of the Barbies, and hits the wooden backboard. "That was close!" I yell.

Then it's my turn. I repeat Mikey's actions, only I hold the slingshot with my left hand instead of the right. Between the V over my hand, I see a long-haired Barbies face, still smiling, her hands in the air as though she is showing me where to aim. Right here, shoot, right here! She has no idea what is about to hit here.

The worn-out rubber tubing creeks as I stretch it to the maximum. I am careful not to pull too hard in case the rubber snaps and breaks.

Barbie and I lock eyes; hers are blue and glassy-eyed, and mine are brown and squinting in the sun. I release the rock, and it shoots down the court, pinging off the metal stake. It makes a similar noise to a hockey puck hitting an iron goal post, a sound Mikey and I are more than familiar with. Neither Barbie falls, much to our chagrin.

It's Mikey's turn again. He loads up, this time with a bigger rock, and let's go. It slices through the air, hits the grass, and then tumbles to the next door through the chain link fence that divides our yards.

We decide we need a better strategy, so we move ten feet closer and lay down on the ground the way we have seen soldiers do in movies. We become replicas of our green plastic toy soldiers, which are already replicas.

We are in the grass now, our knees and elbows gathering stains that our mothers will later chide us for. I take aim at half-long-haired Barbie again; her composure: unchanged. I open my fingers off the pouch. The rock whizzes downstream, pinging the long-haired Barbie square in the forehead. She goes flying toward the backboard and lands in the dirt. Short-haired Barbie falls next to the stake.

Cheering and hurrahs come from our end of the horseshoe pit, the great thunderous roar of those who conquer. We run down the court to check out the damage. Half-long-haired Barbie is none worse for wear: still the same vapid expression, still smiling. She has a small scratch on her right cheek, but other than that, she remains unscathed. The other Barbie is the same.

"Let's put her back and try again," says Mikey.

I don't hesitate. We spend the next hour this way, taking aim, firing rocks, and cheering with glee when one or both of them fall. My mother comes out of the house to add more laundry to the line. "What are you two doing?" she asks.

"Knocking down Barbies," says Mikey.

"Is that the new Barbie I got you last Christmas?" My mother asks me. I nod as I make my way back down the pitch. "That's really not how you should treat your toys," she raises her voice. I look at the Barbie in my hand, my dirty fingernails, my dry, rough hands around her waist, a stark comparison to the gleaming whites of her eyes and the slick, shiny-looking beige of her skin.

We set the Barbies up over and over again and knocked them down more times than we could count if we had to. It is the most fun I have had with the Barbies since I got them.

When we are finished, I put the Barbies in my father's garage along with the slingshot in case we ever want to do it again.