Love the girl. Hate the toy.
You know what’s hard to understand for folks who don’t have children? Just how annoying toys can be. You see, long before I ever had kids I was “that guy.” You know who “that guy” is, don’t you? The older, single dude who sorta enjoys his freedom, but also sorta wants to settle down? The one who bounces from one six-month relationship to the next while simultaneously paying a little too much attention to his niece and nephew?
Anyway, that was me. I used to bust into my hometown completely unannounced, fresh off of a three-day, Manhattan bender, armed only with a preposterous hangover and a handful of toys for my little darlings, toys which I thought somehow earned me a tiny piece of domesticity. But all they really earned me was the label dumbass. Because I had NO idea how annoying many of those toys actually were.
Take Chicken Dance Elmo, for example. I’ll never forget what a hit he was, or so I gathered by the borderline pathological number of times my niece pressed the button that sent our furry red friend into his sing-songy gyrations. It was so cute.
For like the one hour I was there.
It was with that cuteness in mind that I would eventually buy my own children a Chicken Dance Elmo. Sure, he was already starting to get on my nerves a touch, what with the constant exposure I had to his videos. (I think it was all the third-person talk. Puppets that refer to themselves in the third person bug the shit out of John Cave Osborne.) But pet peeves aside, how could I ever dislike a creature who brought my children such joy?
Turns out the answer is by hearing his chicken-dance song 5,413 times.
Elmo wants to be a chicken, Elmo wants to be a duck. Quack, quack, quack, quack.
Well, which is it? I mean, does he wanna be a chicken or does he wanna be a duck. He’s quacking, so I assume he wants to be a duck, yet he’s also dressed in a chicken costume which would indicate a poultry preference. Not to mention the fact that he’s marketed as Chicken Dance Elmo. So, um, why the duck is he quacking?
The toy bugged the living shit out of me, so I did what any parent would do. I hid it from the light of day. Where, I will never tell. And I’ve lived in relative peace ever since. Until recently, that is. When another toy came on to the scene which made Chicken Dance Elmo seem as innocuous as a can of PlayDoh. And I knew as much the second I laid eyes on it.
“What the hell is this?” I asked my wife.
“Well, generally speaking, it’s a gift for Kirby. More specifically, it’s a Dora microphone-speaker set.”
“Whoa. A gift for Kirby. From whom?”
“Grand Finale.”
“Grand Finale?” I repeated as I reached in my back pocket and pulled out my wallet.
“What are you doing?”
“Seeing if that little fucker stole my credit card. How else would a three-week old infant pay for a gift?”
“You’re an idiot,” my wife began. “I bought the gift.”
“I know, Caroline. It was a joke.”
“Oh.” Pause. ”Well, listen here, Sinbad. When you have a new baby, it’s customary for that baby to buy each of the existing children a gift. Don’t you remember when the triplets bought Alli a gift?”
“Vaguely,” I admitted. “So what did Grand Finale get Sam?”
“A tractor.”
“And Jack?”
“Some matchbox cars.”
“So those are both great, but the Dora microphone for Kirby has to go.”
“Why?” Caroline asked.
“Because it’ll be a nightmare. A hotly contested nightmare at that. The kids will fight non-stop over it.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because EVERYONE loves the sound of their own voice.”
“OH,” she answered with a knowing nod of her head. “So that’s why you blog.”
“Okay, Caroline. Listen to me. The triplets will fight over the microphone because each will delight in hearing his or her squeaky little voice emanating from that stupid Boots speaker.”
“Relax. We’ll make ‘em take turns.”
“You don’t understand. It won’t be the fighting that’ll get us. It’ll be that PLUS the annoying noises which emanate from the speaker. That microphone deal is exactly like a recorder, a harmonica or even a kazoo. It’s wildly entertaining, but only to he or she who actually possesses it.”
“Kinda like your blog?”
“Will you be serious?” I asked. “I”m telling you, this microphone thing will be a train wreck.”
“Well I think it’ll work out fine, but if it doesn’t, we’ll just give it the ol’ Elmo treatment.”
The next morning, the triplets opened their respective gifts from Grand Finale. As I predicted, the tractor and matchbox cars were tossed aside as the three jostled for position around the mic like some bad doo-wop group mere moments before opening curtain. Close monitoring was needed for the next hour and even then, several fights broke out. And the noises which came from the speaker?
Simply horrific.
Well, horrific when the noises were actually audible. See, it turns out that the ol’ Boots speaker didn’t work so great. Which meant that half the time, there was no sound coming from it at all.
Until the triplets found a way to make sound come out of the speaker every single time — by simply shoving the microphone halfway down their throats. At which point Caroline and I were lightning quick to pull the plug on the debacle and take the microphone away once and for all.
Because while the screeching was bad enough, the thought of them swapping spit with cold and flu season right around the corner? No thank you.
RIP Dora microphone. Say hi to Elmo for us.
About John Cave Osborne
My brother. You were just like my brother. The giver of Play With Me Elmo. The giver of Sing with me Dora. The giver of harmonicas and drums and effing whistles.
Oh I can’t wait until he has kids. Ha.
Twitter Name: Issascrazyworld
Bwahahaha. Actually the worst was the recorders.
Twitter Name: Issascrazyworld
Hilarious post. Sorry for your pain.
My kids were given Zhu Zhu Pets. Did you know those things don’t have an off switch? I didn’t either. But I do now!
Twitter Name: daddygeekboy
They do too. It’s call a hammer.
Twitter Name: Issascrazyworld
The absolutely worst nightmare game from hell was Chicken Limbo. I sent it to my uncle (when I was mad at him) for his grandkids.
Twitter Name: dragondream
i’m unfamiliar w/ chicken limbo and i must say, i think i’m glad i am.
Twitter Name: johncaveosborne
My parents would give the kids gift that were noise-makers. I made sure the toys were left at my their home. Popping sounds. Trucks or fire engines that speak and make loud noise! Anything that sounds like “Barney” or his friends. Stay. Stay. Stay. Not coming home with me. My gifts to my nephews were always books or drawing supplies.((yes. They probably hated them.))
if a toy talks, it sucks. period.
Twitter Name: johncaveosborne
I’m the cousin who does that. At 29 you’d think I’d learn. I hear payback is a bitch though and I figure by the time I have kids the toys will be insane and I’ll be in a lot of trouble.
I won’t buy Dora stuff, guilty of stuff with sparkles that took my aunt an hour to vacuum out of the carpet. Whoops!!
Twitter Name: Dochaseve
hey, at least you won’t buy Dora stuff. my wife and i have grown to vehemently dislike Dora.
Twitter Name: johncaveosborne
I second the Chicken Limbo as the game from Hell. Not only did it take a PhD to put together, it fell apart even if you did nothing more than breathe on it or looked at it funny. That game earned it’s place in the recycle bin with lightning speed quickness.
Twitter Name: coolwhipmom
no wonder i don’t know about chicken limbo. difficult assemblies are not my bag. at all.
Twitter Name: johncaveosborne
Hilarious!!
My brother in law has bought some ridiculous gifts over the years but the one that stands out is the clown sitting on the train. When you turned it on (with a switch on the underside) it would bang and clang and clack and whistle. You get the picture. ANNOYING! We relegated it to the room farthest from our bedroom. One night we awoke to a horrible sound. The clown train turned itself on in the middle of the night. Scared us to death. Needless to say, it disappeared the next day.
Guess who jut got married? I can’t wait to buy gifts for their precious child.
I’m off to download the list of 10 Astonishingly Annoying Toys for some ideas.
Bwaahahaha!
atta girl, heather! payback is hell.
btw… i thought “clown sitting on a train” was a sexual position? right down to the turning it on with the switch on the underside, then witnessing it bang, clang, clack and whistle.
sorry. i’m like 15 or something.
Twitter Name: johncaveosborne
When ours were all little we had the brilliant idea to get them all those echo microphones. Ever seen one? They ECHO- no electricity needed- they amplify every sound that is screeched into them, for only around $2 at any Kmart. They got the Elmo treatment too, and they didn’t fight over those. We had one each for the 2 year old, two 4 year olds, and the 7 year old. Good times there.
Twitter Name: MommaKnows
When I was young, my father and uncle had a contest of awful gifts. My father got my cousin such things as a slingshot, a drum (classic) and a giant walking stick (of death). I got goldfish. Which I was grossed out by and would not touch for cleaning the tank.
Twitter Name: TalkIsPrimary
My in laws (esp. the BsIN) were notorious for the annyoing gifts when the kids were small. Tickle Me Elmo, Chicken Dance Elmo, those pianos with the loud and slightly off key tones…I made a rule that any of those toys given to my kids would stay at Gran and Pop’s house (where one of the BILs also lived) for the regular visits the kids had. Amusingly enough, the obnoxiousness of the toys declined dramatically after that.
Twitter Name: MamaKaren
By which I mean that the choice of toys to be given as gifts were of the less obnoxious variety, not that obnoxious toys became less so.
Twitter Name: MamaKaren
In my opinion, NOTHING can top those annoying “space” blasters/guns. OMGoodness, the sound decibels those things work at can pierce ear drums! My son got one as a birthday gift and carried it with him for weeks…all day, every day. No chance to hide it, break it, drop it in water. And the little brat knew where to change the batteries, so we couldn’t even remove them without my darling boy showing up next to me with more batteries in his hand asking me to “pix it, mommy, peas?”. My head hurts just thinking about it.
Revenge was awesome…