Child's Play

I don't mean to come off sounding like the Grinch, but my kids have got way too many toys. Thousands and thousands of cheap little pieces of crap that are cluttering up my house and my life and I just want to throw it all away. Seriously, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd load it all up in hefty bags and go dump it in a neighborhood where less fortunate children might find it and divide it fairly among themselves.

It's just wrong--there must be at least 5000 little toys that my children haven't touched more than once. It's got to stop. I swear about 90 per cent of the time the girl's room looks like a bomb went off at Toys R Us. It's like ground zero--little naked Barbie parts of all sizes strewn amid the rubble.

Hell, you can scarcely leave your house without returning with a damn free toy. Where were all the free toys when I was a kid? In my day, you got toys on your Birthday or for Christmas, not because it was lunch-time. Christmas to my girls is a better-than-average day, marred only by the hassle of all that unwrapping.

There just seems to be no way to stop this senseless onslaught of toys--and every day brings more. My wife is a soft touch when it comes to frequent toy purchase and then there's McDonalds and every other damn fast-food chain adding to the problem. Every time I suggest to my wife that it would be a in keeping with fire codes and board of health regulations to perhaps thin it out a little bit, she pacifies me with empty promises of a yard sale. I could care less about the money, I would just like to once walk into their room without the fear of falling down and never being heard from again.

I'm not all that anal, I just like to keep things somewhat tidy--but I'm fighting a futile war. I can't get away with a thing. I'll be cleaning up their rooms just innocently picking up little pieces of legitimate garbage, and the kids will freak, "Daddy, why are you throwing away Mini Mitzi's mittens?" "I'm sorry," I lie, "I thought it was lint."

If you could confine the "toy problem" to their rooms I wouldn't mind so much; but it spills out all over the joint and I've grown accustomed to walking through my house without lifting my feet from the floor. Many a time have I howled in pain after stepping on Mr. Potato Head's hat or Polly Pocket's patio set. Even in broad daylight it pays to shuffle along the carpet like a 90 year-old to avoid serious foot injury. With the static electricity I've generated by my socks sliding across the carpet, I could power a town the size of Kanab.

If someone were to accidentally witness the kid's room at it's worst, their instinctive reaction would be one of shock. Sort of a "My good Lord how could anyone let their children live in these conditions!" I could understand this--but the accurate reaction would be "how can they let me live in these conditions." I've loved and nurtured these babies from day one, yet they remain hell-bent on seeing to it that at least once a day I step on something as sharp as a broken beer bottle.

Out of spite I imagine we would allow them to wade through their shameful toy-soup until you could no longer get the door open, if it weren't for the fact that occasionally people come over to our house. If visitors appear at the door with no warning our only option is to casually kick the overspill back into their room and quickly shut the door. This tactic works well enough because the kid's room is upstairs, but the sudden visit has shaken us. The whole time we act funny, our eyes twitching and darting nervously about like two killers hiding a room full of the dead bodies. "Can we see the upstairs?" "Naa," we'd say. "it's just like down here, really--except, y'know . . . higher."

My wife has attempted to get a handle on the problem by setting up their rooms with an elaborate shelving system with dozens of trays where she futilely attempts to keep the toys organized by categories both specific and vague. Maybe once a week the toys find themselves put away in their respective bins. But this state of order rarely lasts more than 24 hours. I don't fault the kids, though. It's like leaving an alcoholic alone in a liquor store and expecting them to sit on the floor and watch Barney.

To clean the room my wife selects a toy (say a big "see and say") that is suitable for use as a bull-dozer. After about a half-hour of frenzied carpet-scraping she now has the huge piles crowded next to her shelving bins. At this point she begins to methodically sift through the debris until every last toy is in its rightful bin. Meanwhile I've cleaned the entire rest of the house, the garage and mowed the neighbor's lawn. I hate toys.

You see I worry about my children's cognitive development. How are their imaginations supposed to grow when their attention span is divided among so many little pieces of crap? I doubt I had more than four toys at any given time when I was a kid and I can remember them all. Hell, I could kill an entire day with a popsicle stick and a small jar of buttons. Toys meant something back then. This modern world with all it's lousy little free toys is robbing our children of basic values and at the very least ruining Christmas.

Shame on you McDonalds. I'd never go near your Golden Arches ever again if it weren't for the fact that my life is totally controlled by two pre-schoolers. They get away with murder. I'm weak and they know it. They're so damned cute and I love them so much, that I'm an easy mark. They know I hate the menu at McDonalds, yet they sadistically exploit me like two little McPimps. "Sorry I spilled my Orange drink all over the back-seat Dad, by the way how's that Salad Shaker?"

The whole thing is just frightening. We have dozens of little battery operated "Furby-things" that are somehow activated as I pass by at 2 in the morning. They suddenly blurt out startling remarks in some kind of creepy language, "Zmeezik porzlob canzleep." I've been genuinely frightened by them more times than I care to admit. And if you get fed up and throw them in the garbage, they haunt you from under the sink."Why did you throw me away, bad man, you can't throw me away, foolish adult." They are the demon spawn of the Energizer Bunny and they multiply like rabbits. My parents didn't have to deal with this kind of crap. My kids aren't even five yet? Parenting isn't supposed to be this scary until kids hit their teens.