We Can Use It to Play "Baby Elephant Walk"

Abbie received many nice gifts for her birthday. Several people gave her books, providing her the opportunity to disfigure completely new tomes. Her grandmother gave her a walker that she doesn’t walk with so well, but it does have a ball game attached to it so Abbie can play her new favorite sport, Putting Stuff in its Place. A neighbor girl, possibly not realizing how long it might take, gave her money for her first Barbie when she’s ready. A few people made donations to her college fund generous enough to buy five entire seconds on campus, but, with prudent investing, I’m confident that we can raise enough cash to buy upwards of nine seconds of college when the time comes.

Then there’s the elephant organ. Her great-grandmother gave this to her with some other very nice gifts. The elephant organ is easily the most hideous toy in Abbie’s arsenal. Its premise is innocent enough. It’s shaped like a blue elephant with an octave’s worth of white and black keys, which are red on this toy, splayed across its abdomen. A pair of eighth notes appears on one key, with a different animal head gracing the rest of the white keys. Press a key, and it plays a song or a corresponding animal sound while a small light flashes.

I can hear you saying, “Gee, Matt, that sounds like a wonderful toy to me. It introduces her to music. It teaches her what sounds different animals make. The flashing light prepares her for a culture filled with epileptic-inducing attention grabbers. Most importantly, it entertains her. Aren’t you just being a weenie by whining about something to give you something to write about for today?”

The answer is, no, this thing is genuinely hideous for several reasons. First, this thing makes animal noises in the same sense that the Kansas City Royals play baseball; if you use your imagination, you can tell what it’s supposed to be doing. If a race of vaguely intelligent robots descended on our planet, abducted our animals, and replaced them with hastily made robot animal clones that make sounds similar enough to fool their alien auditory sensors into thinking it’s the same sound, that’s the kind of animal noises this thing makes. Most of the sounds are indecipherable without looking at the picture. The “cow” sounds like a siren. The “grasshopper” sounds and looks like an alien until you realize it has to be a terrestrial animal. Second, three of the seven animal keys are birds. To its credit, it’s three different bird noises, but that’s still pretty lame. It’s not exactly sophisticated enough to identify bird species by its replicated call. Third, the “black” keys do the same thing as the white keys a half step below, making the “black” keys superfluous and very lame. Forth, the song it plays is “It’s a Small World,” and once the song begins playing, it won’t stop for several minutes unless someone presses another key. Last and most importantly, it’s loud. It’s very loud. It’s ear splittingly, door rattlingly, parent crying inducingly loud.

Naturally, Abbie loves this thing, and she found a way to make it even more annoying. The other day, Abbie spit up on it, which caused the contact under the song key to malfunction resulting in it rapidly repeating the first note of “It’s a Small World” into infinity. To recreate the effect at home, try holding a smoke detector about 9 inches from your ear, then hit the “test” button. My only remedy was to remove the batteries, a task that required a screwdriver that I couldn’t find. While storming through the house in search of a screwdriver the infernal machine, Abbie kept trying to tug on my leg as she vocalized her displeasure in losing access to her beloved elephant organ. After this rare opportunity to directly compare the two noises, I could honestly say I’d rather hear Abbie scream than her elephant organ. I’d even take the Baby Ben Stein toy over the elephant organ.