Originally we bought her porcelain dolls for gift-giving occasions. They sat quietly on the shelf with their plastic hair in perfect ringlets and their painted-on smiles as mysterious as the Mona Lisa�s. Babies with glass tears. Girls wearing gingham and clutching teddy bears. Ornate dresses and up-swept hairdos.

All silent.

All creepy.

Soon after that novelty wore off, she announced a preference for dolls that do things. We got her dolls that talked, walked, roller skated, ate, peed, and did everything else like-life that you or a marketing rep for Mattel could imagine. There was one doll named Julie who was especially spooky. She not only talked, but she could sense when the room got brighter, when a different person would talk with her, when you picked her up to move her, and when the temperature changed.

All-knowing.

All creepy.

When my brother was about three, a Chucky movie came out. This doll talked and walked like Mom�s other dolls (and could probably roller skate too!), but it also killed people. Being three years old, he recognized that his doll-with-knife avoidance skills were likely less keen than us older kids, leaving him the most slash-able in the family.

And in a family where it�s each member for him or herself, this isn�t a goof position to be in.

Kyle would run from my sister when she�d torture him in the toy store aisles, a Chucky doll in hand and scary ROAR! to go with it. And just as Kyle would react when the creature from Tales from the Crypt would appear (deemed �Snake� in his scaredy cat three-year-old mind), he�d squeal like a little girl seeing a hairy spider and would take refuge behind me or my mother.

(Jenna was the mean sister. I was Kyle�s protector, although I�ll admit that I was no match for our sister�s size or athleticism. The worst I could do was telling her repeatedly that she was a boy -- which I did often and got in trouble for repeatedly.)

One day my mom went out junk shopping and came back with her usual trunk of goodies. There was likely some $3 Thumbelina-type collectible that needed some TLC before it was worth thousands among the other man�s trash, but there were also two dolls she was especially interested in showing off.

She found a set of three dolls with desks who wrote words according to the disks you placed inside them. One was a bear, one was a girl, and the other was a boy.

Dressed in his corduroy overalls, her frilly dress, and his fur suit, they had smiles on their face that silently exclaimed, �Learning is fun!� I don�t know what kind of kids would have ever played with this nambsy-pambsy bullshit. Although is was amazing that the dolls could write CAT and DOG, it was damn boring. If they juggled, did backflips, and told Yo-Momma jokes during class, things might be different.

So we�ve pasted on our oh-yes-this-is-going-to-be-fun faces for my mom�s sake and actually got a little interested in how someone could mechanically create reasonably priced dolls that would write.

Then my brother came down the stairs and let out a scream that would curdle milk in the cow�s udders into cheese.

Apparently the boy doll looked like Chucky, so my mom had to put that doll into hiding.

Ahh... One fewer creepy doll on display in the house.�