By Lou Storey

“Let’s play Barbie!”

By the age of eight, most boys have learned to be cautious and watchful, practiced at avoiding girly things, choosing toy guns over playing house, roughhousing over tea time with stuffed animals. Not me.

Again, my tone, all lightness and brotherly love, “Let’s play Barbie!”

Always up for a challenge, my sister Anne cannot say no. A year and a half older and smarter by far, Anne bests me in most things. Flawless spelling, fluent in multiplication tables, precocious in her science skills, all of which leaves almost no way to compete with her brilliance, except for one. I set the game up, hoping to lure her.

The rules of Barbie, Queen of the Prom, are simple enough—throw the dice across the board and move your pastel colored plastic game piece along the multicolored spaces while picking up SURPRISE cards that will help or hinder your progress. The ultimate goal is to be the first to climb the pathway at the center of the board to be crowned Queen of the Prom. Before you can do that, however, you have to earn Barbie color-coded cash, secure a formal dress, get elected to a school club, and land a boyfriend, your date to the prom.

Anne gives me a level no-nonsense look and takes the bait. Game on.

Stop & Shop is my first detour. Right away, our different strategies in this game become apparent. My plan is simple: take whatever I can get, fast and cheap. The least expensive outfit, “Silver Flame,” a basic red strapless top with a petticoated white skirt, illustrated in loopy unflattering squiggles, nice for a picnic, but for Prom?—is now mine in one throw of the dice. For Anne, only the white wrap-around stole with the soft cream, form-fitting floor-length gown of “Enchanted Evening” will do. It takes several more rolls of the dice to own it. I take the lead.

I zip through the progressive squares of School Clubs, grabbing up Drama Club President, which seems fitting enough, while Anne holds out using up multiple throws to earn nothing less than Class President.

Anne is starting to huff as I lengthen my lead. I fear she will exit the game as she has so often done before. I must do something. The Boyfriends ramp is dead ahead.

“I’ll just die if I don’t get Ken as my prom date!” I say to Anne in all earnestness. My needy wish pushes all the buttons as intended, pulling Anne back into the game and giving her a clear goal. A quick roll of the dice will land my piece on top of either Bob, Tom, Ken, or Poindexter. I see the Ken card, his perfect brown locks, his collegiate self-satisfied smile, confident in his role of sexy dreamboat Prom King. Tom has thick glasses that suggest a reedy-voiced stamp collector. Bob wears a sweatshirt, and you can practically smell the grease. Poindexter, the sorriest of the lot, has just two black dots for eyes and sugar bowl ears, every girl’s nightmare date.

I whisper to the dice, “work it baby,” something I heard a gambler say on TV, and throw—Poindexter. I can, if I want, keep tossing, going around and around until I land on Mister Perfect. I don’t, but Anne does, hellbent on perfection while my little plastic player piece dances up the board toward the hot pink pathway steps leading to the five crested golden Barbie crown.

Always the same outcome. I never lose. “Anne, look! I’m Queen of the Prom!”

Of course, back then I was a little queen in other ways as well, more ways than I knew, but at that point, my incredible thrill was not yet the socially forbidden lure of loving boys. It was the pleasure of seeing my perfect sister Anne go through her slow burn into complete meltdown. It never failed—the quivering jaw, eyes darting wildly around the board as if the game itself had somehow betrayed her, and then—whoosh! Anne would lose all control, flinging the offending board up in the air. For Anne, the strategy of hard work and only settling for the best would eventually lead to scholarships, awards, academic and professional acclaim, a winner at anything she put her hand to. I am happy for her. But for me, these many hard years later, I hold fast to the memory of being Queen of the Prom, sitting there in pure satisfaction while SURPRISE cards and Barbie play money rained down around me like sparkling confetti in celebration of my sweet victory.