That's the Way to Do It!

One day the Offsprogs' childminder turned up with an ominously large gladstone bag stuffed with something lumpy and heavy.
She opened it and turned it upside down: a host of second-hand Barbies tumbled on the the floor.
'They belonged to my daughter,' she told us, 'And they were up in the loft and I thought the Offsprogs would like them'.
The Offsprogs were curious; they had built up a mini-stock themselves that nestled in its pink nylon-ness in a discarded pile on the bedroom floor.
And I was furious, as I felt that I was being used as a skip to throw away unwanted loft contents, but I gradually came round to the generosity of spirit rather than the desire-to-dump of the gesture.

Soon, the Barbies had become punk rockers, with cropped hair coloured green by the felt pen set; they spoke a language called Argety Bargle that only they and the Offsprogs could understand, which was based on parodying the L'Oreal 'Because I'm Worth It' ads.
They acquired facial tattoos and some rather nasty red felt-tip injuries. Gradually, I wafted them towards the bin, one by one, as they became so disfigured that I started to feel physically uncomfortable every time I chanced upon one of them propped against the wall.

One day as I sat drinking tea in the kitchen I heard a steady thump-thump-thump-thump coming from upstairs where Offsprog Two was playing on her own. I went up to investigate, and she was holding a poor Barbie by the trotters and whacking its enhanced plastic breasts flat as pancakes against the bedroom wall; there was a pile of future victims beside her.

Next day, I rescued the lot by throwing them away.