Maybe “hate” is too strong of a word.  But annoying just doesn’t do it justice.  Either way, anyone who has ever had kids or been around kids probably has a personal experience with a toy that drove them crazy.

You know, that noisy, squeaky, repetitive, grate-on-your-nerves wonder toy that the TV glamorized, your child had to have, and now you are stuck listening to, with the stark reality of waiting for the blasted thing to break while secretly hoping you could drop kick it over the neighbor’s fence.

That being said, one of our “favorite” such toys was this little pink, fuzzy, cutesy, singing porky pig with motorized legs.  Our five year old daughter “won” the bloody thing at a Christmas white elephant gift exchange.  Sounds harmless enough, huh?  But if that’s all there was to it, I wouldn’t be writing this.  At its evil core was that song.

Granted, it sang a rather nice Christmas tune.  Or rather, normally it would be a nice Christmas tune.  And I have absolutely nothing against Christmas jingles.  But the song was recorded with the most aggravating cutesy voice and intertwined with the most grating pig snorts and grunts – which continued all the way through the song!  Aside from the fact that one could take offense at what may seem like a mockery of a Christmas song, the overall effect was just plain irritating no matter what the song might have been.

So our daughter quickly learned of our displeasure with this toy, though she continued to love it.  In fact, she seemed to take pleasure in bringing it out into our presence and pressing that little button on the pig’s ear to watch us squirm.  And that was its undoing.

On one such occasion my wife and I were in the kitchen cooking and our daughter was pestering us for something and didn’t like our answer.  So she promptly said “hmm” and went and got little piggy, placed it on the kitchen counter, pressed the start button on its ear, and walked away!

As soon as those oh-too-familiar harassing sounds began to pummel us, my wife swiftly reached over and nabbed it off of the counter and placed it high on top of our refrigerator.  The trouble is, that blasted pig’s legs were motoring about as it sang and pranced and within a few moments we both glanced up and saw piggy teetered towards the edge.

My wife and I looked quickly at each other and our eyes were saying “are you going to jump to catch it?”  I’m sure we both thought “naaaa” at the same time as we watched the little pink blob do a side roll off the front edge of the frig.  Like a swimmer’s diving nightmare, little pig landed squarely on its side on the tile floor with a slight snapping sound.  And all was a blessed quiet!

As my wife and I grinned at each other, our daughter, who had heard the thump and ran back into the room, burst into tears.  We had to turn our heads away to hide the uncontrollable snickering at this neat stroke of luck.

As Dr. Seuss asked many decades ago in his book The Cat In The Hat, “What would you do?”  Hey, accidents do happen after all.