You’re a year younger than I, which might account for your youthful… well, everything, from your spectacular figure and eye-popping blonde sheen—
not that I’m jealous, though OK, I was, just a little, long ago—but honey, you clearly have a whole team of pros keeping you poofed into perfection. And that’s fine. You do you, Barbara Millicent Roberts.
That’s the name you were given in the novels I read about you when I was growing up. It’s a long way from your hometown of Willows, Wisconsin, to being a full-fledged movie star.
Look at you, headliner of your own summer blockbuster. That’s gotta be a bigger wow than the best Dreamhouse ever. I know you’ve been in films before—love you in the Toy Story movies—but now you’re up there on the Big Screen all pinked out doing major dance numbers. Yeow!
I’ve imagined being your friend since I first held one of your earliest incarnations. I never mistreated you—pulled out your hair or drew on you. I didn’t want to be you, exactly, but I admired your can-do spirit of adventure.
I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to, now that you’re approaching sixty-five, and I’m squarely there. What if you lower your heels—the ones on your feet, I mean— and we grab our tennies (not for tennis, though I bet you still have the cute outfits for it, not to mention a tightly-strung racquet), and do something radical, like go for a walk-and-talk?
I think it’d be fun, us two sexagenarians, to stroll and laugh about so much in our lives—sure, a bit about the men— the long term (looking at you, Ken) and the short term (hey, surfer Blaine).
But we both know those guys were only part of our lives. I want to hear about you flying planes, rocketing into space, driving race cars, delivering babies. You evolved so much from your initial black-and-white striped bathing suit self.
I knew you then, with your pointy boobs and impossible figure, a real doll. But in the decades that followed so many other girls like me watched you grow into more of a real woman, as we do, if we’re lucky—
some of us as moms and professionals, as scientists and mechanics and teachers and veterinarians and singers and writers—
and some of us also blessed with a perennially killer wardrobe and fabulous legs that go on for days and days and days.
5 things you could see— • The letter summoning you • The doctor’s large finger in the cold exam room • The big yellow bus that was not taking you to school • Your first barracks • The freshly shaved heads of your fellow soldiers
4 things you could hear— • Ten-hut! • All right, maggots—drop and give me 20. • the rat-a-tat of assault rifles • the chatter of your heart
3 things you could feel— • The cold submachine gun in your sweaty hands • The clammy neck of a downed soldier; praying for a pulse • Your aching, blistered, rotting feet
2 things you could smell— • Blood, sometimes your own • Death, not your own—yet
1 thing you could taste— • Coming home, never the same, but home, Hallelujah. You lucky bastard.
•••
In memory of my father, Roger E. Haag, infantryman in the Korean War, with gratitude.
United States Marine Captain Francis “Ike” Fenton in despair as he is told that his company is almost out of ammunition while trying to hold off a heavy counter-attack by North Korean forces. (Photo by David Douglas Duncan /The LIFE Images Collection)
