I'm the kind of girl, Reader, who's up for anything.

A haunted house where they kidnap you and tie you up?

I'm so in.

Heard a strange noise out in the dark forest and need someone to investigate?

I'm your girl.

Move across the country to pursue a relationship with somebody I've known for five minutes who may or may not be a psychopath?

I was born for this.

But the one thing in life that turns me into a pile of terrified mush?

Dolls.

I hate them with the passion of 1,000 burning suns.

---

I know the exact moment when this phobia began. It was 2nd grade, on Halloween day. Our teacher, Ms. Adama, suggested that volunteers come up and tell the class a ghost story.

Most of the stories were harmless, as they were coming out of seven-year-old brains that played with My Little Ponies and cut their teeth on Casper the Friendly Ghost. That was until Brad stood up and told a story about a murderous china doll. In this twisted little tale, a family buys a doll and invites it lovingly into their home. The doll, for reasons that are never explained, proceeds to violently murder each and every one of them by slashing them to bits with its little porcelain fingernail.

Pretty sure Ms. Adama never did ghost story roulette again after that.

Now Brad's story was about a porcelain "china" doll.

You know, those creepy-as-faack dolls whose eyes close when you lay them down and open again when you sit them back up?

(Yeuugg, why do those things exist)?

But at that time in my seven-year-old life, my father would bring back dolls from whatever far-flung destination he was sent to for work, and I was currently in possession of a doll of Chinese descent - wearing the garb of a rice paddy worker.

So when Brad told his story, I heard "china," and I pictured the doll in the pointed hat sitting on the shelf at home.

No part of my mind did the math.

My Chinese doll didn't have hard fingernails; she was made out of soft rubber.

And how would she get up onto the bed, the better to murder me in my sleep? She was eight inches tall and didn't have bendable knees.

None of that mattered. I became utterly convinced that this doll had designs on murder, and the moment that I closed my eyes, my life and those of my family were in danger. I started attempting to stay awake all night in my bedroom at home and subsequently did that in the summertime at my dad's house because that room was also full of dolls.

When the Cabbage Patch craze was a thing, a family friend went to a great deal of effort - stood in those long-ass lines, remember those? - and spent a significant amount of money to acquire a Cabbage Patch Doll for me. I wanted nothing to do with it. The Cabbage Patch was less fearsome than either a porcelain doll with blinking fucking eyes or a homicidal Chinese rice paddy worker, but still.

Barbies, especially as disembodied heads, also should not exist.

Babyface from Toy Story?

Nope.

This is probably a primary factor in my choice to never have kids.

But you know what a weird side effect is of not liking - and therefore not playing with - dolls?

I never really understood just how deeply my brain associated "playing" with "playing with dolls."

Because of my avid disdain for dolls,

I spent the majority of my life thinking that I didn't know how to play.

It's sad to think back on the times I beat myself up about that.

---

That's why my conversation this week on Multi-Passionate Like a Boss, the Podcast, was so uplifting and permission-giving . . . because, according to Jeff Harry, play looks like different things to different people.

Jeff, who has made it his mission to play for a living, says that play happens whenever you engage in any task that makes you lose time - to forget to eat and pee, as it were.

And I realized that when I'm painting or writing or hiking or cooking or reading . . . I'm playing.

This conversation was also incredible because it tells you exactly how to build play back into your life if you think you don't do enough of it.

(Hint: Most of us don't do enough of it).

And, if you're a podcast skimmer, make sure you do not miss the part about reverse gossip.

It's my favorite concept.

That has ever existed.

In all of time immortal.

​Check out the episode here.​