When you’ve been around long enough, you know this is coming when you overhear momma on the phone with her sister saying things like, “These damn kids, I tell you what. I’m gonna snap a neck if I hear one more thing about a battery or a 200-watt lightbulb for the Easy Bake oven. I swear they nearly burned the house down trying to make caramel candy in it. I believe that thing is dangerous.”
This is also the day every single news source in the world broadcasts news of multiple disfigurements and deaths caused by the most popular toys on the market. You know, exactly 24 hours after thirty bajillion of them are sold and carried off into unsuspecting households to fester and burn holes in the carpet.
“This just in!! The super-popular ‘Thing-a-ma-bob,’ hottest toy on the market for Christmas 2016 and manufactured in Wehateamericastan, has been reported to cause hair loss and possible self-immolation! Some of the components are reportedly molded with Fukushima mud and C-4, and could cause sudden death or at least bad sores on your face. Consumers are urged to return the Thing-a-ma-bob immediately, for a partial refund and a long wait in a line filled with crying children.”
Smart kids who got a Thing-a-ma-bob for Christmas run off with it as soon as they hear the news, and gather in kid-groups on the fringes of neighborhoods to ban together in the solidarity of living on the edge with a death-defying toy, while their mommas are looking for them.
“My Thing-a-ma-bob started smoking last night, but I just ignored it.”
“Nuh-unnnh. They said on the news if you breathe the smoke it makes your face melt off. You still have a face.”
“I didn’t breathe it, dummy. But my dog did, and he bit the mailman today.”
(Collective gasp. This kid is now a God among kids, with a dangerous toy and a rabid dog.)
Then there’s the one kid, who got books and board games for Christmas, and nobody likes him until he speaks up and says, “We can use the Thing-a-ma-bob to make a drone deflector,” and everyone scatters to “borrow” their dad’s new Christmas tools and get a whoopin’ for it, because they forget to put them back. The walk to the playground to retrieve daddy’s new vice grips is a long one, because you know what’s waiting for you when you get back.
Ah, the day after Christmas…
