An Ambling Preamble

The world before Abbie’s birth was a wonderful place where I had a perfect plan in place for raising a child. Some elements of my plan, like no fried foods as long as she lives under my roof, are still in effect. Other elements, like me working on the computer while she plays quietly in her playpen, we’ve dropped like so many Tasteeos.

One of the first aspects I dropped was not letting her have anything that makes noise electronically. Before Abbie, I couldn’t imagine any sound more annoying than a cartoon character giggling or the song “It’s a Small World After All” played over and over the way children like to do. Then Abbie was born, and it turns out that, compared to her screaming, anything that keeps her happy sounds like a Mozart concerto, albeit a concerto played by inhumanly chipper cartoon characters. Plus, toy manufacturers seem obsessed with cramming some sort of noise making chip into everything they make no matter how unnecessary, possibly because it gives them one more Brain Building feature to tout on the packaging. Apparently some people are concerned about the educational value of a set of stackable blocks unless they play “Row, Row Your Boat.”

So I’ve relaxed my anti-noise stance. It was hard to enforce anyway since people, and by “people” I mean “people who won’t have to live with the consequences,” like to give her gifts of toys. Most of these toys are actually much less irritating than I thought they’d be, perhaps because I’ve resigned myself to hearing their infinite chimes. Some toys, though, are just too grating for me to let her use. One specific toy plays about a minute long Beethoven excerpt when activated. I don’t want to sound off against specific companies here, so let’s just say a company known as Baby Ben Stein produces it. This Baby Ben Stein toy plays the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony* when activated. Beethoven’s Fifth is already an oddly intense musical choice to use in a baby’s toy, but the musical tone emanating from it is harsh and angry, like the recording reflects how Beethoven would feel about having one of history’s greatest musical works condensed into a cheaply made child’s toy. The good people at Baby Ben Stein, upon hearing this enraged tin can rendition, decided that if they couldn’t make it sound good they should at least make it sound loud. The end result being that whenever the toy is activated, usually because someone inadvertently knocked it on the ground and stepped on it, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as Varese would interpret it fills the entire house at a volume roughly equivalent to three jet engines for a full two minutes, because of course the toy doesn’t have an off switch. We usually keep this Baby Ben Stein toy out of her reach to prevent instilling an appreciation of classical music in Abbie so deep that she huddles into a whimpering ball upon hearing it.

Believe it or not, I was actually going someplace relevant to today with this post. I’ve already hit my self-imposed daily limit, though. Now I could either give you the reader a little extra bonus in your daily Abbie update, or I could just end this post with a stupid joke and finish the story tomorrow.

“Edgard Varese” can be rearranged to spell “Ravaged Reeds.”

* If you don’t recognize this piece by name, it’s the one that begins “Da da da duuuuh, da da da duuuuh.”