HomeOne of my students carries with her a thick, pale purple daily planner. (Why a 12-year old needs a notebook to chart out the events in her life, I cannot even begin to speculate. It certainly tarnishes my belief that kids have it easy.) This puffy-covered planner is accompanied by matching gel pens of every color in the spectrum, a 6-inch ruler, travel size scissors, and a treasure trove of stickers - some of them scented. Each of these items maintains a common theme: they're all adorned with a bold Hello Kitty logo.For a simply-drawn icon that is as old as I am, Hello Kitty has sure gotten around. I used to pine for H.K. memorabilia as a child, despite the fact that the big stars at the time were the Smurfs and Rainbow Brite. For a time, my parents and relatives appeased my insatiable desire by watching me draw pictures of her over and over again on my Ess-A-Sketch. A few even went so far as to find me the rare sticker at the local card shop. My classmates however, scorned my obsession with H.K., believing her to be a crude, substandard character that did not have her own Saturday morning cartoon. Unaffected, I continued to wish upon every opportunity - shooting stars, birthday candle blowing, wishbone pulling - that one day H.K. would have her day in the spotlight.
Lately, it appears that all of my hopes and dreams came true. However I think I'm past the stage at which I could appreciate Hello Kitty's newfound fame. H.K. and her new brood - the half of whose names elude me at the moment - have infiltrated every corner of the merchandise market for children, mainly girls, age 3 and up. Everywhere I turn, there they are ... staring at me with their black-dot eyes, tempting me with their cheap "Made-in-somethirdworldcountry" wares. I hear them calling me from their mouthless (some of them) faces, in their sing-songy voices, to scoop them up into my arms and squish their puff-a-lump bodies.
But I resist. Barely.
Until my student brazenly displayed her pastel purple H.K. planner last weekend, I was ready to get off the Sanrio bandwagon once in for all. It was easy to scoff at all the super-powered Hondas adorned with racing stickers and stuffed Chococats in the rear windows. I rolled my eyes at pinky nail sized Keroppis hanging uselessly off the antennae of cell phones owned by recent college graduates. Just who did these people think they were fooling?
On my way to work last Sunday, I passed in front of a store window on Mott Street that was so completely covered in Sanrio memorabilia that the slightest tap on the glass from the outside would have compromised the integrity of the see-through barrier, releasing tons of pastel-colored goodness to spill out to the end of the city block. I wiped away a drop of anticipatory sweat off my brow and checked my watch. Fifteen minutes before I was due in class. Oh evil temptress Kitty, how could I resist your wily ways?
I made some feeble excuse to myself to go in. I can't account for my actions in the H.K. palace, but somehow I walked out of that store with a bag of goodies fifteen minutes later. I kept trying to convince myself over and over again that these trinkets were earmarked for some distant cousin of mine, who I was sure to visit in the upcoming months. I might bring these plastic babies home, but I wasn't going to think about them any more. Or open them. Or play with them. Or talk to them. Or bring them to class for show and tell. Or allow them to sleep with me at night.