I never really liked Cabbage Patch Dolls. They peaked in the 80s, when I was in high school, becoming valuable collectibles (someone didn’t make enough, either by accident or on purpose), toys you left in the box to increase their value. I always thought they looked a little creepy. Too soft. Too homespun. And okay, I’ll say it. Those dolls look dumb.

Which is why I was silently horrified when our dear friend Janice — a woman who, it must now be stated, gives TERRIFIC gifts, like paper made from elephant poop on Annabelle’s most recent birthday — gave Sophie a Cabbage Patch Doll for a holiday, so long ago I know don’t recall which.

Janice was excited to watch us open the gift. “I just had to get it!” she said. “It looks exactly like Sophie!”

Now, I’m not above quietly confiscating an offending gift and simply making it disappear. I do it all the time — with duplicates, dangerous items, or something that will be too messy even for my house.

But I couldn’t throw out this doll. It was Sophie. Janice had said so — even though I couldn’t see the resemblance beyond the hair and eyes. As I type this I realize that’s probably all Janice meant. She couldn’t have been looking at the half-open mouth and the empty expression, right? Anyhow, Sophie’s expression is anything but empty, and her eyes are GORGEOUS, nothing like that doll’s. She looks like a perfect little porcelain china doll, not a patchwork-wearing, stuffed Cabbage Patch Doll.

That’s me, overthinking everything. The doll made in my likeness would have worry lines as deep as ditches and Diet Coke stains on its shirt.

Like all dolls that enter our house, the CPD was immediately stripped naked and left for dead in the landfill, I mean play room. Every few weeks, it surfaces, and I pick it up, thinking I’ll add it to the pile for the ARC thrift store.

But I can’t.