I'm just gonna let you sit there for a minute.

Okay, have you taken it all in?  This thing?  With the mouth?  I had a run-in with a whole gang of these things in a posh little children's boutique up in Ohio.  I saw them the millisecond I walked through the door.  I've always been sharp on spotting the n'er-do-wells.  I would have avoided them altogether if my Mom hadn't run over to them, Pee Wee Herman style.

"Oh, hunny look!!  I think you feed them things!"

"No, ma.  I think they sing or something."

So she squeezed the lips.  I just stood there.  No way was I joining in on her reindeer games.  She became confused.  She stuck her finger in its mouth, right there between those freaky teeth.  Nothing.  Now they had her.  They'd sucked her in with their mysterious talent.  After about 15 minutes of this, it was just sad.  I had to stop it.  But I couldn't.  Now I was intrigued with my Mom's inability to figure out a toy recommended for age 3 and up.

I'd noticed the cashier stop chatting up the stock hottie and nod towards my Mom with a smirk all over his face and in his hair.  They eye-balled me, trying to determine if the ignorant gene had been bequeathed to me.  I rolled my eyes and shook my head to assure them that I had NOT been given the stupid gene and was, in fact, highly intelligent with a bright future ahead of me.

NOTE:

This is my mom:

This is me with a blonde wig on...threatening to steal mom's identity:

Mom's somewhat gentle prodding of the toy was starting to morph into textbook physical abuse.  She had the same look in her eye that she'd had when I got caught cheating at the Amish school. (That's a whole different post altogether.)  I'm all about heckling annoying toys.  It brought me obscene pleasure to kick that Hokey Pokey Elmo over in mid-turn-around.  So I fully appreciated my mom's abrupt change of mood.  But we were in public.  I beat up toys in the sanctity of my own home.  Not out on the streets like a drunk Mike Tyson.

I made an executive decision to take control of the situation.  It took all of about 5 seconds.  I walked over, pushed my mom (who was now sweating profusely) out of the way and punched the Sing-a-Ma-Jig square in the gut.  Lo and behold, it started singing, "When the Saints Come Marching In."  I'm serious. It did.  Then I started punching more of them in the gut.  More music!  And they were harmonizing!  The faster you punched, the faster they'd sing!  This was GENIUS!

My mom was so proud of me.  Like I was a Harvard graduate.  I jumped up and down like Rocky.  I fought back the urge to snatch my mom's bottle of water that she carried in her purse because of medication-induced dry mouth…and dump it all over the top of my head.  I turned to faced the boutique's employees like, "Now what?!  Boo-ya!  That's how we roll, yo!  Yee-ah!"

It was suggested that we leave and try out the restaurant on the corner for lunch.  Grand idea!  My mom and I had gotten kicked out of a child's toy store and we high-fived on our way out the door to congratulate each other on our inherited super badness.  That Sing-a-Ma-Jig was like "Bye Bye" when we walked out the door.  And we were like, "Sit on it, sock mouth!"

We don't care.  We're renegades