Barbie, GI Joe, and the Geneva Convention

I was still 13 that summer when you’re old enough to know your GI Joes aren’t real soldiers but still young enough to panic when one goes missing in action. We lived on Redwood Drive, where the blacktop surrendered to gravel, and the gravel gave up entirely somewhere around our mailbox.

One afternoon, the sun had settled into its regular post at two o’clock high, watching over us like a lazy warden. My brother Adam and I had deployed our five GI Joes along the front porch–all locked and loaded. We were maneuvering along the house wall, and the sidewalk crack voices hoarse from whispering classified intel and battle cries when they showed up.

Deirdre, age seven and already an iron-fisted matriarch, marched onto the scene with a shoebox full of Barbies under one arm and Marcy, age five, clutching a Ken doll by his head.

“We’re here for the peace talks,” Deirdre announced as if she’d just stepped into a UN summit.

Adam and I gave each other the same look our dad gave the weather radio every time it mentioned “light scattered showers.” Suspicion. Dread. The scent of betrayal riding in on the wind.

Deirdre, unbothered, seated Barbie on the porch rail, legs dangling over as she’d just returned from a week at the spa and now had time to address global conflict. Ken stood behind her, shirtless, expression blank, like a man who lost a bar fight with existential dread.

Our GI Joes didn’t negotiate with civilians. They came trained for covert operations and mountain reconnaissance, not diplomatic summits with women who wore heels to breakfast. But Deirdre insisted Barbie had come with intelligence.

“There’s a snake in the grass,” she said solemnly.

Adam dove to the side, knocking over a flower pot. Marcy screamed. And my GI Joe fell off the porch.

Turns out she meant figuratively. Barbie warned the soldiers that “the snake” was Ken, who had—according to Deirdre—been “passing secrets under the table at the Pizza Hut,” which was impressive since none of us had been to Pizza Hut.

A diplomatic incident broke out almost immediately. Barbie accused Ken of treason. Adam tried to court-martial him using a Lincoln Log as a gavel. Deirdre objected. Marcy sobbed and took Ken hostage inside an empty Folgers can, demanding a pony and a wedding.

For the next hour, we negotiated terms. Barbie refused to let go of her Malibu estate. Adam’s GI Joe offered to build her a new one out of mud and pinecones before he launched a rescue mission that failed spectacularly when Marcy pushed him into the flowerbed.

In the end, we declared a ceasefire. Ken got exiled to the sandbox. Barbie and my GI Joe started seeing each other “casually.” And Deirdre? She promoted herself to General of the Peace Corps, which I didn’t have the heart to explain wasn’t a military unit.

That night, over dinner, Dad said he’d seen us from the window and thought we were reenacting the Cuban Missile Crisis.

“Well,” I said, “we learned that love is war.”

He chuckled and said, “Just wait ’til high school, next month.”

Looking back, I reckon it was our first brush with diplomacy, heartbreak, and the complicated mess of human emotions wrapped in tiny plastic torsos. But I’ll be darned if we didn’t make peace, even though Barbie got all the good stuff.

And to this day, I’m sure my sister Deirdre could out-negotiate a NATO ambassador.