I can neither confirm nor deny that Santa finally caved to that whole American Girl doll thing, but I can confirm that I very nearly gave birth to a cow as I clicked that little "Submit" button on the order. A very large, indignant, holier-than-thou cow. I believe it would have been pink with purple spots and tinged with an aura of disgust. If you had tried to milk it, you would have been met with a bucket of disbelief.
Seriously, people, my inner poor girl wept as I clicked that button. I didn't really know she was still in there, but BAM! she came to the forefront mighty quick as I scrolled down that screen with a $100 doll in my shopping cart. She slapped me across the face as she flashed to all of the things that can be done with $100. She screamed about all the things that have been done with $100 in the past.
$100. That was always the so-called "promised" amount of money that would be spent on back-to-school clothes. Every year all through grade school, I would carefully scrounge around KMart, trying to find the best deals so that I could get the most for the money. My parents would put the items in layaway, and sometimes I would see some of them again the week school started. Sometimes. Sometimes they didn't quite manage to pull the full $100 together and I would have to sacrifice some things. One year not a single thing was released from layaway because the "promised" $100 had to be used to pay the bills.
$100. When I lived in Spain as an exchange student in 1994 (AKA The Dark Ages), I took $700 worth of spending money with me, intended to last the entire seven months I was to be there. And it did, meaning I managed to keep my expenses under $100 per month. I paid for food (lots and lots and lots of churros con chocolate...mmmmm....) and transportation costs and school books and a trip to Madrid to take the ACTs and toiletries and everything else with that money. It seemed like plenty at the time.
$100. It was my monthly budget my first year of college as well. I used $100 to pay for gas and as "fun money" before I was able to secure a few decent part-time jobs that would work around my full course load. Even then I didn't have much more to work with, but if someone had handed me $100, I would have been able to eat for months with it. Ramen, FTW! (Is it weird that I still love Ramen? Because I definitely do. Oriental flavor, to be precise.)
$100. I can currently buy enough groceries to feed our entire 3-person family for at least two weeks with $100. It's probably closer to three weeks, actually. It's a pleasant side effect to having a household that is 2/3 vegetarian, and a product of my addiction to hunting down coupons as much as possible.
That inner poor girl is all sorts of verklempt over the thought of a $100 doll coming into this house. And not in a good way.
But.
Secretly that inner poor girl is a little proud of the not-so-poor woman she became and the fact that she *can* buy a $100 doll. Even if it is a stupid ridiculous idea.
She's also a little pissed that Santa is going to get all the credit.