Sunday, September 21, 2014

Somewhere Out There, A Toy Engineer is Laughing At Me.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm living in a Stephen King novel. Or I'm on the set of a Steven Spielberg movie. **note to self: don't name any future children, "Steve"**

I can't be the only parent out there who feels this way. I know it's happened to you.

The house is quiet and dark. The kids are finally asleep, and you're comfortably situated under the covers. And then suddenly, at approximately 1:37am, you hear noise coming from the living room.

"Old MacDonald Had a Farm..."

But the kids are in bed, and you know for a fact that they haven't left their room because of cribs or gates or childproof doorknobs, or whatever.

An electronic voice breaks the silence again,

"Mama, Mama. Peek-a-boo!"

And then you know. Your children's toys are possessed.

I tell you what, nothing gives me the heebee jeebees like needing to go downstairs and figure out which toy decided to start talking in the middle of the night. I start looking around for a Chucky doll....and I haven't even seen the movie!

I now find myself giving a wary eye to every noise-making toy I come across. I'm still waiting for the day when my kids outgrow the talking toys, and I can finally know that my sleep won't be interrupted by a tiny prerecorded voice.

Thankfully though, I haven't recently had a toy interaction that was as scary as the one I had with a stuffed turtle.

A couple of years ago, I bought this blue turtle from a consignment sale for Caleb. I thought it was cute, and I wanted to get each of the kids a special stuffed animal for their beds. Only this turtle had a mind of it's own.
I think at one point, it must have said words above a guttural level. But either during it's time with it's previous owner or during it's time in the washing machine after I brought it home, the turtle turned into the thing of nightmares. It said,

"Chomp, chomp, chomp."

Just as low and evil-y sounding as possible. I am totally not exaggerating or making this up! And this turtle also liked to "chomp" at odd times of the day and night when not a single human being was even in the same room with him. Do you know what it's like to hear a blue turtle chomping at you from the next room while you are home alone with just your four infants???

Good heavens, I've never been so scared of a toy in my life, as I was of that turtle. I never had to deal with stuff like this before kids!
So I did what any terrified self-respecting mother would do. I waited until my husband got home from work one night in case the stuffed animal put up a fight, got out my seam ripper, and performed major turtle surgery. I yanked that voice box right out of that scary turtle and threw it away. I sewed him back up, tucked him back in bed with Caleb, and thought we were done with it.

And then I heard,

"Chomp, chomp, chomp."

coming from the trashcan.

Somewhere out there, a toy engineer is still laughing at me.

5 comments:

  1. Haha I am laughing...we had a toy helicopter that would do this. Creepy creepy when you are alone!

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  2. That Chucky movie was very creepy!! You should definitely watch it. I enjoyed reading about the turtle toy--reminds me of the voice I hear coming from our closet on occasion when one of our cats step on the pedometer that is in a box in there.

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  3. Thank you so much!!! I laughed so hard when reading this! I know my day is a-coming!

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  4. Haha, when I was younger my little sister had a baby alive doll that said "I love you mommy!" and once when the battery was getting low it went off from the closet in the middle of the night saying that, but in the creepy almost dead-battery way and my sister went screaming into my parents room. I hate talking toys that can't be turned off!

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  5. oh my gosh I'm laughing so hard right now. I've had this sitting in my inbox for awhile now, because the title intriqued me - so worth it! The worst we had was one of those talking puzzles with animals. We found it mostly happened when the lights were turned on and off.

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