Several times between now and the era of the stage 2 Huggie overnight diapers, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of sleep deprivation, awakening in the land of disproportionate proportions with oversized talking caterpillars, four-key colorful pianos, and airplanes whose propellers spin with a psychedelic glow not too far off from the St. Elmo’s fire that buzzes around the blades of a turboprop before a lightning strike. It’s in this land and through my weary eyes that I make awful rhythms with toddler toys and get the toys that talk to say bad words in their little sing-songy voice. Since the voice sounds like all the ladies who work at “Gymboree,” I like to pretend it’s them swearing at the drive-thru speaker because the order was read back wrong.
As I sit down with a new toy to experiment with what words the manufacturer thinks are too dirty for a baby, I start slow and pull from the standard repository of filth… I type out George Carlin’s seven dirty words. Most are censored although many aren’t spoken clearly enough to do damage if you played them to a drunken Eagles fan after an upset. You’d be more likely to get punched in the eye because you taunted them with a green toy caterpillar. Leapfrog has an array of talking toys that are limited in their range of letter combinations. Before you can finish typing in the offending word, you are greeted with an “Oh, that tickles,” which, depending on the word, makes it more offensive. Apparently, getting a caterpillar to swear tickles them. Who knew?
Interestingly, you are unable to type in anything that rhymes with “duck,” for it’s the U and the C that trigger the “Oh, that tickles.” I’ll have to move to some knock-off brand of toy whose seller has limited ethics if I’m to teach the boy how to spell “awestruck.”