Stockpiling Those Singing Animals
I just love the month of February. In Houston, it means the two months of winter weather is ending and we can look forward to some California type moderate weather in March before the heat wave begins.
It is also Valentine’s Day smack in the middle of the short month. As someone who has been fortunate enough to be someone’s valentine for many, many years – it is nice to get a reminder of how loved I am.
Of course with obsessive traits running through our family – I see it in my son just as I see it in me, I go a little overboard with my greetings.
Ever since the marketing genius people decided that singing stuffed animals were an appropriate way of saying “I Love You,” I have been stocking up on them, and I always give them to my husband and my children.
It’s funny to see the evolution of some of the earlier ones. When you push the little button on some of the ones that are pushing three or more years old, you get a very warped version of the happy song she used to be singing. But though they are not as sharp as they used to be voice-wise, many of those dust collectors – I mean animals– I have given my husband on Valentine’s Day, line his bookcase walls.
One of my very favorites is a Lobster with a straw hat – open to his tenacles – that has big pink bug eyes and big pink lips and wears a Hawaiian lei and a big button that says “I Love You” sings “Hot Hot Hot.” This lobster with a Caribbean accent was out of commission and he couldn’t even croak out the beginning of the song. (Doesn’t every husband want to be crooned to that he is “Hot Hot Hot?”) When you push his little button, the music starts and then just winds down in a warped, deficient way.
But wait! I discovered that these gems work on battery power. If you can just get to the battery pack, you can change their batteries so they can live to sing another day. I did that with my Lobster friend and he is rocking out once more.
How dare anyone suggest we throw any of these out? My husband and I are BOTH not good at parting with sentimental things, no matter how goofy. And it’s not as if they won’t be replaced this year, and next year, and the next and so on. Once I find something that amuses me – and these stuffed singing critters amuse the heck out of me — I go crazy with that product.
Happy Valentine’s Day – celebrate those you love!
My crazy poodle Luke has destroyed every talking animal. Their last words were probably: “Get this psycho animal off of me!”