It’s really amazing to look my
kids’ toys today as opposed to those of my generation in the late 1970s and
early 80s. On the plus side, today’s
toys are so much more incredibly intricate and portable. However, they also require an endless amount
of batteries or require a power source or charging of some kind. An overload of lights, LED screens, and
noises. Actually reading the instruction
manual has become a navigational necessity for use rather than an
afterthought for reference purposes.
I did have some toys that had
lights and made a multitude of noises, but you didn’t have to be a certified IT
specialist in order to play with them. I
can remember getting a Hess truck from my parents every year for Christmas. You revved it forward to make it go and
headlights lit up as it plodded forward.
Other than my Dukes of Hazzard
slot car racing set, that was essentially the coolest thing that I had ever seen
in my life up to that point.
I did, however, have a set of Star Wars toys that provided a whole host of flashing lights
and laser sounds as well. Snow speeders,
X-Wing fighters, and Millennium Falcons… oh my.
Then, there was the Starbird. A
toy that my dad still admires and reminisces about to this day. It made ascending and descending sounds as
you pointed the spaceship up towards the ceiling or down towards the
ground. That was pretty mind-blowing stuff
for the time in my personal, eight year old opinion.
As cool as all of those toys were
though, they were nothing like the technological equivalents of today. Even my youngest daughter’s
toys put those of my adolescence to shame. I
honestly believe that her LeapFrog LeapReader pen has literally more memory
embedded in it than the boat anchor that I called a computer back in college.
As intricate as these modern
toys are though, there always seems to be the opportunity for those choice, short-circuit scenarios
that commonly occur at my expense.
Scenarios that I have affectionately coined as the “poltergeist
phenomena”. You know, when your kids’ battery-operated
toys decide to awaken themselves in the middle of the night or scream at you from
the dark confines of a poorly lit basement.
It’s gotten to the point where I need to keep a change of underwear downstairs
in order to combat such startling encounters.
Personally, I blame my skittishness
of the supernatural squarely on growing up in the horror movie heyday of those same
1970s and 80s. Movies like Friday the 13th, Halloween, The Amityville Horror, The Omen, The Exorcist, and The Shining
that provided many sleepless nights of imagining shadows dancing back and forth
across my room or of possessed inanimate objects coming to life to wreak
paranormal havoc on me after I fell asleep.
When my son was younger, he had a
toy piano that would go off by itself in the middle of the night. Upon hearing those ghostly keys play their toe-tapping
jigs all by their lonesome, I would quietly creep slowly down the stairs to investigate. Seemingly for paranormal turds and giggles,
it would tease me by starting and stopping its spectral song whenever I took a
step into the room. Surely it had to be
a loose wire short-circuiting itself with the vibrations of my steps. Right?
However, spooked by the prospect that it could possibly sense my
presence, I literally punted the piano across the darkened room and made a run
for it back up the stairs.
Apparently, in my mind, ghosts
can’t chase you up stairs while they're playing a flying piano.
Looking back, my son could never figure out how
the legs on that piano always got bent and broken. The upward velocity achieved by a spooked,
former soccer player’s foot could have possibly contributed a minor role to its
premature demise…
Most recently, I was startled by the
kids’ play kitchen “boiling water” as I walked down the stairs for work early
one morning. It took me a couple of
minutes to figure out what it was and find the source of that particular poltergeist. I couldn’t find the location of the
batteries, so I violently shook it until the noise stopped. As I started out the door, I heard boiling
water again. More mocking, more teasing.
Perhaps my personal favorite
“heebie-jeebie” moment occurred one evening while taking out the trash. It was close to 11 pm and I had forgotten to
put the can by the road for the next day’s collection. I grabbed the can and started to roll it down
the driveway. That was when I heard
it. A satanic voice erupted from deep within
the trash can. I hurriedly dropped it
and took several steps backwards. Then, I
heard it moving around inside.
The hair on my arms shot up as I continued
to stumble backwards towards the garage door.
More evil voices, more rustling.
Then, suddenly…nothing. It had
apparently settled back into the slumber of its own personal inner circle of
Hell.
My mind raced. What could it be? A rat…a bat…a raccoon? Why not just throw a demonically-possessed Oscar
the Grouch into the mix? Whatever it was, it was restless and angry.
Minutes later, armed with a
flashlight and my son’s aluminum baseball bat, I cautiously approached the can
again. I threw the top of the trash can off
with the bat and immediately crouched low and hard to the ground. Subconsciously, I must have expected something
to just sit up and make a lunge for me. With
that bat pulled back and assuming the stance of a steroid-fueled, major league batter,
I was ready to send whatever popped out into the upper decks of Yankee Stadium.
“Wendy…darling. Light of my
life. I’m not gonna hurt ya. You didn’t let me finish my sentence. I said I’m not gonna hurt ya.”
Unfortunately, there would be no
such luck. I was only greeted with more agitated
movements and the same low, wicked voice from the trash can. Then it settled once more.
After a couple of minutes, I
continued my investigation. I poked the
trash bags with the bat and was greeted this time by a high-pitched whine. At that point, I proceeded to unload on the
trash bags with the bat in a desperate attempt to bludgeon the evil spirit back
into the afterlife.
“Cross over children. All are
welcome. All are welcome. Go into the Light. There is peace and serenity in the light.”
Taking a step back to admire the
vicious efficiency of my work, I heard the growl yet again. Not thinking of my neighbors likely fast
asleep next-door, I yelled directly into the trash can. “Why won’t you die? Just die already!”
“Mr. Torrance! I see you have
hardly taken care of the business we discussed.”
“No need to rub it in, Mr. Grady.”
The beatings continued…
Frustrated and nearly exhausted,
I finally mustered up enough courage to move some of the trash bags back with
the bat in order to perform a visual inspection of this indestructible fiend. Assuming the worst, I held the flashlight in
one hand and pulled the bat back in the other like a Zulu warrior readying his
spear.
I peered long and hard. Was that..it was!
It was! It was the kids’
Tickle-Me-Elmo toy.
It hadn’t worked right in weeks. My wife must have tossed it into the trash
with half-dead batteries still in it. For
whatever reason, it stormed back to life with a low-powered growl as I rolled
the can down the driveway. A small sense
of relief and humiliation washed over me after replaying the entire episode in
my head.
Much like his animated friends
of Toy Story 3 fame, he too already had
a one-way ticket punched to the local incinerator. However with my heart still racing, ten years
effectively erased from my life, and that aluminum bat still raised squarely
over my head, I decided to take my jittery frustrations out on that cuddly
little, red-headed rascal.
“Does this tickle, {insert favorite
Samuel L. Jackson profanity-laced tirade here}?”
Picture the macabre scene. A bald, shadowy lunatic wildly beating a
giggling voice with a baseball bat in the dark recesses of a dimly lit driveway. This turned into a horror flick after all…written
and produced by yours truly. True to the
genre, use of a chainsaw had also crossed my twisted mind. But at that late hour, it likely would have
led to a prospective court appearance and a state-mandated psych evaluation or
two.
It may have taken twenty minutes
and the assistance of metal batting equipment, but the trash did finally make
it to the curb that evening. I can also
say that, without a doubt, I personally witnessed Elmo go into the light."This house...is clean."
