Night Of the Talking Toys

Here is a Christmas Eve story for you. My siblings and I always tried to get together at my mother, Meme, and daddy's House for Christmas. We would all come from wherever we might be living and converge with our children to await Santa Clause. This event happened one Christmas after I had become a mom and my sister was a mom and my brother was a dad we had a freaky event happen. No, not that we had become parents even though that is pretty freaky. We had become parents of the most adorable children God ever put on this green earth. This particular Christmas they all wanted animated gifts. One wanted a talking Mother Goose while another one wanted something called A.G. Bear that was voice activated and then of course they all wanted these talking dolls. They were Amazing Amanda dolls and they were voice activated.

This is the Amazing Amanda. A little Freaky isn't she?

My mother had decided instead of setting the Christmas tree up in the living room like normal people, we would set it up in the front entrance way. We began our Christmas Eve ritual of drinking rum infused eggnog and putting toys together. Let me just ask why? Why must we put things together? Why do the toy manufacturers do this to parents? Why do parents wait until Christmas Eve to put these evil toys together? Why oh WHY?

Try putting the stickers on this sucker after a mew too finny eggsnogs. hiccup!

We each had a specific bike or Barbie house to snap together or on which to put stickers. Again let me insert here that this should be done BEFORE you have had one too many of my mother’s eggnogs. We were for some unknown reason trying to do this all crammed in the front entrance way. The fact that the tree was set up in the entrance way made it such all of the toys were tightly packed together.

I put one of these together and forgot to tighten the handlebars. It resulted in a wreck with a garbage can. Yes I had too many snegglogs.

Under the tree sat three Amazing Amanda dolls all dressed in their pink overalls with their hair up in dog ears. You know what dog ears are don’t you? Dog ears are the same as pigtails a pony tail on either side of the head up high. They were so sweet and cute sitting there with their eyes closed. Then across the entrance sat three A.G. Bears in all their plushiness.

This is A.G. Bear. He really didn't talk, just grunted back whatever you said.

Next to them sat Teddy Ruxpin and the Talking Mother Goose. We finally finished the whole set-up for Christmas morning sometime around 2:00 a.m. We all went into the living room to watch a show called The Albatross that my brother had taped on a VHS tape. We sat on the couch when all of a sudden one of the Amazing Amanda dolls said “Mommie, I’m hungry” in her sing song high pitched automated little girl voice. This of course caused #2 Amazing Amanda to pipe up and say “I love you mommie.” This began a full out conversation among the three Amanda’s and the A.G. Bears grunting their responses along with Teddy Ruxpin’s eyes popping open to start reciting a Teddy Ruxpin story and Mother Goose reciting a fairy tale.

Teddy looks innocent enough, but pair him up with those evil Amanda's and you never know what he might do.

We all were sitting on my mother’s couch each one of us looked from one to the other for an explanation. Then we started laughing which of course caused the dolls and plushies to talk even more. This went on for awhile with each of us shushing the other to get the toys to be quiet. This didn’t work very well because with each shush it would start the toys up all over again which would cause us to laugh. You get the idea. The only way we were finally able to quiet down the toy gallery was for all of us to go to bed.

My mother fell asleep on the couch as she was wont to do. She said about an hour after she had fallen asleep she heard someone talking. Not knowing if it was one of her grandchildren or the doll she called back “What?” which of course caused the whole entrance way to once again erupt into conversation. My mother gave up and went to bed.

My daddy had gone to bed earlier had not been awake when the dolls had been activated or the bikes had been assembled. He got up to complete his normal 4:00 a.m. Christmas morning routine which involved going out to get the paper. He came in the house and shook off the cold of the morning and said to no one in particular “Whew it’s cold out there!” That was it that started the toy packed hallway to once again erupt into conversation. Daddy was done. He didn’t care for possessed dolls. He went and woke up his grandchildren to come take claim to the animated dolls and animals.

See here is Mother Goose teaching her young duckling how to terrorize old people on Christmas Eve.

The grandkids came running down the hall to a round of exchange. They stopped and looked the toys carrying on their discourse. They looked at each other. They looked at their parents. Then with the excitement of kids on Christmas morning ran and claimed each of their animated buddies.

*sidenote: Tadpole being only 3 years old was a little freaked out by the Amazing Amanda and shortly after Christmas had me pull the batteries out. She didn’t like being awakened by the possessed doll.*