As a little girl, I sometimes wondered what kind of man I might marry. Since, like all little girls of that day, I played with Barbie Dolls, the first image that sprang to mind when I tried to consider the perfect man, was Ken. If Ken was good enough for Barbie, why shouldn’t he be good enough for me? And so I grew up thinking, as I’m sure many little girls of my day did, that my perfect husband, my Prince Charming on a white horse, riding in to gallantly save me from a life of loneliness, would look like a Ken doll.
I grew up, and grew out of my fascination with Barbie Dolls, but somewhere in the back of my mind, the image of “tall dark and handsome” Ken has still always been flitting around in my psyche. After a while I came to realize that men like Ken didn’t really exist (at least not for me, a girl who looked nothing like a Barbie Doll), but somehow, even on a subconscious level, there was always that hope that I might snag myself a Ken.
Then I met Russ, on-line, and fell in love with him way before I ever saw him, when I could only guess what he looked like. We came to discover that we were as perfect for each other as Barbie and Ken. But all this before we ever laid eyes on each other.
Along the way, we exchanged pictures, starting with baby pictures and progressing to the current day, so that there was a “slow reveal” of our physical appearances to each other. That was a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it to anyone who begins a relationship on-line, since it really affords an opportunity to get to know each other, not only who you are today, but who you were before. Sometimes you can see the adult peeking out from behind the eyes of the child. And visa versa. In particular, I really enjoyed this elementary school picture of Russ:
He looks so mischievous! So much fun! A little further on, I discovered that at the time in my life when I was a crazy-for-boy-bands-with-long-hair teenybopper, Russ looked like this:
I kid him now that he was the “Missing Cowsill,” — the Cowsills, of course, being the ultimate boy band with long hair, as far as I’m concerned. If we had been in the same Junior High together, I definitely would have had a crush on him.
But imagine my surprise when he sent me this picture of himself, as an adult, at his sister’s wedding:
Ken! There’s my Ken doll! Tall, dark and handsome…Would you not agree he’s an absolute doll in this picture?
Of course many years have passed since so many of the pictures we sent each other, and neither of us looks as good as we once did. But that’s really incidental, since our relationship has always been—even *before* the beginning— based on so much more than physical appearance. Hair fades to gray, the face sags, and a slender physique is now little more than a memory (For both of us! For all of us). But every so often, I still see the little boy Russ once was, in his eyes, or his mischievous smile. He is my rock star. And he is, and always will be, my Ken.
