The Sandbox Saga part 1

I did my share of playing with dolls as a kid. I had the rag doll with the fancy pioneer dresses. She got a wasting disease, cleverly illustrated by my cutting open her limbs and removing her stuffing a little at a time. Eventually she had to use a cane to walk, and she took up begging in my closet. Somehow I managed to acquire a to-scale baby doll, and single motherhood compounded the tragedy of disease. I think she probably died, though I don't remember any specific end to her story.

There was a family of assorted action figures, happy meal prizes, and homemade clothespin dolls who lived in one room of my magnificent doll mansion. They had to keep to one room due to a rotating series of disasters: floods, zombies, poverty that forced them to rent out the majority of the house and live as virtual slaves, and any other bit of trauma that I could steal from whatever I was reading at the time. Eventually the family escaped to the wilds, where they all died in the desert and were given elaborate funerals.

I should probably talk about the desert before I go on.  My sandbox was a 4x6 board rectangle that was set in the ground and filled with dirt. There was no limit to how deep I could dig, and once I got down through the superficial layers of soil there was solid clay that, when mixed with water and grass, was perfect for building nearly indestructible sand castles.  Castles, and huts, and tombs, and barracks, and elaborate temples with flat stone alters perfect for sacrificing ants.

That was really the only down side. The sandbox was absolutely infested with the sort of giant red ants that require serious stomping to kill. The desert people developed an entire religious system based on sacrificing ants.

More on that later.

The dollhouse people died in the desert, and were buried with elaborate ceremonies, and many sacrifices. The only survivor was a happy meal prize, a miniature cabbage patch doll with yellow pigtails and a pink plastic nightgown. I called her Lizzie. She made it back to civilization, but her mind had been damaged in the tragedy. It was only a matter of time before she returned to the desert.