Cranky and need to vent? Try these D*!*!* dolls Christopher_Cousins TOPSHAM � Sarah Holt is not a mean or destructive person, but at Firehouse Graphics on Main Street, she's known as "The Violent Customer." Holt, a former writer for The Times Record and 1996 graduate of Mt. Ararat High School, went to the embroidery and sewing business recently in a panic. She had destroyed the property of someone she barely knows. To make matters worse, she did it deliberately. For Holt, following directions never caused such a ruckus. Holt was house-sitting in the area recently, keeping the heat on and feeding a dog, when she noticed a "Dammit Doll" on an upstairs bureau. The doll looked old and tattered, and had the following poem stitched onto it: "When you want to throw the phone Or kick the deck and shout Here's a little Dammit Doll You cannot do without. Just grab it firmly by the legs And find a place to slam it And as you whack its stuffing out Yell dammit dammit dammit!!" "I just couldn't resist," said Holt. Just as the poem instructed, she grabbed it by the legs and whacked it on the bureau. On the first strike, the doll's neck split open and to Holt's dismay, the doll's stuffing sifted onto the floor. Only then did she actually need it for its intended purpose. "I was so horrified," she said. She quickly devised a plan to have the doll repaired before its owners returned. She took it to Firehouse Graphics, but the fabric was too deteriorated to sew and its pattern could not be matched. But Susan and Rob Simmons, co-owners of the business, agreed to build another Dammit Doll for Holt. Disappointed, dismayed and dejected, Holt dialed up the owners of the destroyed Dammit Doll. "I had to fess up," she said. According to Holt, the woman who made the doll wasn't too upset about its destruction. "It's been years since I thwacked that thing myself," wrote the woman to Holt in an e-mail. The woman first found the dolls decades ago at a craft fair in Florida. She then copied the design and made hundreds of them, which she sold in Nigeria to benefit projects for the American Women's Club. This might seem like a logical and happy ending to this story, but for Firehouse Graphics � and as it turns out, most of Topsham's town officials � this is where it begins. "Our employees got all excited about it," said Rob Simmons. "They said 'Hey, we can make these.' You never know what's going to sell these days, but it was something we were willing to experiment with." Firehouse Graphics specializes in embroidery, and has the computer equipment to sew nearly any design onto a piece of fabric. Some of the first Dammit Dolls featured the Mt. Ararat High School Eagles logo and the Brunswick Dragon. Then followed dolls with New York Yankees logos on them (designed especially for Boston Red Sox fans) and others specially made for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day. Within a couple weeks, the company had orders for some six dozen Dammit Dolls. Some of those orders came from Jim Howard, a member of several town committees, who thought some of his peers in the town's government could at times use a new way to vent their frustration. "I think they all need something like this," said Howard. "I thought it was just kind of funny." Howard had Firehouse Graphics create custom dolls for the police and fire chiefs, the town clerk and manager, the public works director, the finance director and several other Topsham staffers. "I just want to be at the meeting when you're all using them," said Howard. Donald Russell, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said that might in fact happen. "You always have those moments when you could use something like this," he said. Asked if she ever suspected that her moment of destructive self-indulgence would turn into a political self-help movement, Holt said no. "I'm so embarrassed," she said. "This is crazy."