Early one morning, a few of the girls were sitting around chatting about a few things while enjoying an early teatime.

Dawn, who is also known as "The Twinn of a Thousand Questions" dropped the bombshell. "Cait," she asked, "I read somewhere that somebody said the doll collectors are creepy. Do you think doll collectors are creepy?"
The murmur of conversation ceased and all heads turned towards Caitlyn.
"Um, gee Dawn, I guess it depends on what you mean by creepy?"
"Strange anaemic girls with long morbid black dresses and lots of eyeshadow and black fingernails who go around making out that they are witches are kinda creepy" Paige said.
"I seem to recall a certain Twinn whose name I won't mention, who turned up here last Halloween in a witch costume." Virginia said mischievously.

"Well, it was a pretty good costume you have to admit." Paige admitted.
"It wasn't as creepy as the stunt Sarah Willow pulled on us when she arrived on Halloween evening of 2004. Remember how she rattled those chains?" Cait reminded Dawn.

"I will never forget that." Dawn said, "It still makes me break out in goosebumps."
"Sarah Willow pulling a stunt like that? but she is such a serious Twinn." Paige said, somewhat taken aback.
"Don't you believe it Paige, if there is a practical joke being played you can bet that Sarah Willow is behind it. The problem is nobody ever expects her to do things like that and that's how she gets away with it!" Jennifer explained, having been caught out in a number of Sarah's practical jokes in the past.
"What about those strange little old ladies that go around with dogs in prams and who mutter to themselves and smell of mould and lavender and who go around feeding stray cats and have pictures of their long dead fiancee next to their beds and who wear sensible shoes?" Tina, the new arrival asked.

Lily Su shuddered, "I dont even want to think about them, where I come from they always smell of fish and have these huge warts with a single black hair growing from it."

"Oh yes, and they always give you a look that says "back off buster or I will bop you with my brolly or run over you with my walker."
"Or pelt you with fishguts."
Everybody agreed that being pelted with fishguts by a brolly waving little old lady was not only creepy but decidely smelly.
"Oh, I have just remembered, what about those little blonde pigtailed girls who go around ripping the heads off fashion dolls and then flushing them down the loo." Paige said.
"Oh yes... those little body parts go round and round and round in the bowl." Jennifer added,

"and then they blame their brothers. I dread to think what they will get up to when they get older," she continued.
"Those little girls are not creepy, they are scarey. Lucky for all of us they are now more obsessed with cellphones, fashion and makeup than dolls. Perfect little executive and managerial type clones in the making."
"Cellphones, fashion and makeup? now that's creepy!" Everybody agreed.
"Whatever happened to toy telephones, Mary Jane shoes and face painting sessions at the local fete?" Tina asked wistfully.
"And don' forget those strange old men that sidle along with shifty eyes and a mysterious paperbag tucked under their jacket?" Caitlyn said, recalling meeting one of them one morning when she was on an errand.
"You mean the ones that mumble all the time and growl at small dogs, and who puncture your ball when you kick it over their fence?" Virgina asked, recalling the day she had lost her favourite ball over a fence.
"Those are the ones. Their houses always have this look of menace about them, and there always seems to be a broken car in the driveway, and when you step on their lawn they throw open a window and holler "GetyerdirtyfeetoffmylawnorIwillcallthecops!!!"
"Don't forget about those dusty old butler guys who look like Igors in the Discworld books, they sure are creepy!" Said Dawn who was a big Discworld fan.
"Yes but the Igors are creepy in a nice way!" Everybody seemed to enjoy the Discworld books and the Igors and wished that there was a Twinn Igor.
Virginia however, was quick to denounce Igors, seeing as she had donated her own body to at least 4 separate Twinns during her stay at the Continuum. "Been there, done that, donated the body!" she said firmly!

"I was reading an article that said that the average doll collector is a 45 year old married woman with several children," said Paige.
"That excludes quite a few people we know." Dawn added.
"Well," Caitlyn said, "the question to ask is, how many of those are doll collectors?"
Nobody actually had an answer to that.
"The way I see it, most collectors are kinda strange and obsessive. Its just the degree that they go to which can make them slightly odd. Anybody that collects navel lint or pictures of football players is creepy in my book. But then I consider that most humans are creepy." Caitlyn added.

"You are right Cait, after all, how many times have people done the "cootchie cootchie coo" thing to one of us? or the "awwww lookie at the cute likkle dolly" bit?"
"I don't know about the rest of you but personally I want to run away when they do that. People should do that to babies or small dogs, not to dolls. It does get kind of embarrassing, especially when its an adult doing it! Of course we are not allowed to run away, we have to take it with a frozen smile on our faces and not even burst out laughing or squirm when it tickles." Lily Su said.

Then Jennifer raised an interesting point. "I have just thought about something, what about people who go around rescuing other dolls from horrible homes? Kind of like how they rescued Anastasia from Henrietta and Henry Harris and their crummy dog!"

"And don't forget the people that make dresses for their dolls and buy shoes for them?" Tina said
"And people that fix up old battered dolls and give them to underprivileged children? they sure aren't creepy!" Virginia added.

"There we go, I am sure that for every doll collector that sounds creepy there are a few that aren't! the one consolation is we all ended up with a collector, and none of those other strange people." Caitlyn summed up.
Jennifer sighed, "I don't know about how the rest of you feel, but I really feel that it's a dolls life."