Evil Lurks in the Cabbage Patch

Children of the ‘80’s, we’ve been unconsciously influenced; our free will has been ripped from us.  It took a good fifteen years before we saw it, but there it was, and it’s still continuing.

I have been able to trace it all back to 1983 when cult leader, Xavier Roberts birthed his nightmarishly adorable handy work upon the toy stores of America.  That’s right brothers and sisters, because of his damn Cabbage Patch Kids we grew accustomed to first and middle names like, Bryce Mackenzie, Hunter Ashlyn, and Addison Taylor.  Even if you didn’t own one, the imprint was left in your mind.

Roberts was intent that no two of these little horrors could be named the same, but because of increasing sales he quickly ran out of real names and began reaching outside of the, then limited, baby name books.  He started with cities: Madison, Sydney, Austin, moved to his favorite celebrity last names: Jordan, Dylan, Jagger.  Then he got a little ethereal: Trinity, Faith, and Destiny. Finally, he just started putting a couple of letters together in random sequence and adding “yden,” Jayden, Brayden, Hayden. The best part was that the names were unisex, so it didn’t matter what gender the doll was.  Diabolical!

The fad ended and everything seemed fine for years until it came time to start naming our own children. Some sort of mental switch must have tripped in our collective psyche and we began to search for the names with which we were programmed.  “You know, I rather like ‘Cheyenne,’ for a girl’s name.  I remember my sister had a doll that name.  Man, did she love that thing… she’s dead now … so let’s name our baby after my dead sister’s doll.” And so on.

My real issue with the Cabbage Patch is that because we’re using more exotic names for our kids, the pool of stripper names has been almost depleted.  Which is why I’m encouraging all the dancers working the lunch crowd at Forbidden Fruit on Kendall Avenue to start adopting old lady names as aliases.  “Let’s give a big hand for Beatrice! Shake it, Bea! Now on the main stage, dancing to Motley Crue … Gladys!  She’ll be followed by the sexy Martha in the Champagne Room!”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 2:28 pm.
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